"Am I at war with Rupert Murdoch?" He said on the tape "Far from it, if anything I would say I love News Corp and Rupert, perhaps a little too much, ha ha"
Is what the papers would have been reporting had the Business Minister been a Conservative and he'd been caught saying the opposite of Vince Cable. For what Vince said, was no worse than the quote above, yet he maintains his ministerial position (albeit with a bit of power cut from it) and there is no outpouring of rage over his lack of impartiality from the anti-mudoch media.
If the situation had been reversed and it had been revealed that the Business Minister was pro Murdoch you can gurantee that the columnists would still be screaming now. Instead we have the Telegraph claiming that it had always intended to publish the full transcript and that tidbit, really we did, honest, there was no agenda in leaving it out, none whatsoever. All in all simply appaling journalistic ethics.Worse still by keeping Vince as a minister all that is happening is a reinforcement of his delusion that he's in some way too important to be sacked and a stoking of his monster, I predicted the recession, ego. Yes I understand that he holds a large sway over the left of the party but by not removing him, and in broad terms barely sanctioning him, all that has happened is that power has been reinforced.
Since Vince came to office he has enjoyed the privilege of pushing his left leaning views out there, playing to his left base within the Liberal party, who lets face it are really Labour voters too afraid to vote Labour. Coming alongside his constant banker bashing and his crazy anti captialism speech at the Lib Dem conference this whole fiasco has turned into just another chance for him to play to the gallery.
Footnote:
For a fantastic take on the Cable story check out satirical website The Daily Mash
