Poor old Vince Cable. First, the man who tried to persuade Gordon Brown to keep alive the prospect of a “progressive alliance” appears on BBC Question Time, apparently on the orders of the Tories, and “meditates” his way through a debate over the regressive, VAT-hiking Budget.
Now, he has been forced on the BBC to defend the cap on immigration that his party previously opposed — as it did the VAT rise.
No wonder Harriet Harman says he has gone from “national treasure to Treasury poodle”; still less that a poll today shows half of all Liberal Democrat voters are poised to defect.