Sir Vince Cable is well over 65 and no longer an MP, but as he adds stewardship of a local mental health charity to his portfolio of commitments, he tells Rosanna Greenstreet that he is nowhere near retiring.
In the spring of 2009 when I interviewed Vince Cable for the Weekend Guardian Magazine, he told me that retirement and redundancy were his greatest fears. Seven years on, after the shattering defeat of the Liberal Democrats in a general election that saw Vince lose both his position as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and his previously safe seat in Twickenham after 18 years, you might expect him to be embracing both of the R-words.
Not a bit of it. When I visit the Twickenham semi that has been his home for the past 40 years, he may be 72 and wearing slippers and a cosy fleece, but he is far from putting his feet up. Since May 2015, Vince has not only written a follow up to The Storm, his best-selling book about the causes of the 2008 world economic crisis (After the Storm is out in paperback this May), he has penned a novel, received a Knighthood, continues to ballroom dance once a week at the Kingston Dance Studio and become patron of an important mental health charity in our area called Together as One.
He has been campaigning for better care for those with mental health issues for a very long time, having seen his mother suffer with post-natal depression after the birth of his baby brother when Vince was 10.
“My mother had a serious breakdown and she was taken off to hospital for a year and my brother was fostered. Her recovery was partly due to adult education – she got back into society through learning about philosophy, poetry and art; she discovered that she was quite a good painter,” he tells me, adding, “Mental health has always been the Cinderella service within the NHS and I fear that’s deteriorated under pressure of cuts. The truth is, various support structures in our area have closed, which means the network of arrangements for people who have mental health difficulties has gradually weakened.”
Together as One is based at the cricket pavilion on Twickenham Green and it is largely funded by donations and run entirely by volunteers. Three days a week, TAO operates a drop-in centre for adults facing social isolation, offering hot meals at cost price and free activities such as art and craft, snooker and board games. When possible there are also outings to places, such as Kew Gardens and the cinema.
Cable says, “I think TAO is a wonderful initiative to engage with people who would otherwise struggle and give them a meeting place and a sense of support to build up their confidence. It’s exactly what’s needed.”
Sir Cable speaks with other TAO volunteers
Born in York, the son of chocolate factory workers, Cable was first in his family to go to university. He read natural sciences and economics at Cambridge where he was President of the Union, and then did a PhD at Glasgow. Then, increasingly concerned with the plight of the mentally ill, he returned to York where he volunteered at a hospital called The Retreat.
“When I left university I did part-time nursing in a Quaker mental hospital where they introduced innovative things like art therapy. You could see even then, 50 years ago, the importance that art played for people who found it difficult to communicate in other ways,” Cable explains, adding, “I happened to meet my late wife Olympia there, she was also nursing.”
Vince and Olympia, who was Indian, married in 1968 and theirs was a happy union, producing three children – Paul, Aida and Hugo – and lasting until her death from breast cancer in 2001. Vince has since married again, his second wife being a former farmer named Rachel Smith. The couple divide their time between Rachel’s farm in the New Forest and Vince’s home just a stone’s throw from Twickenham stadium. The comfortable sitting room is lined with pictures and mementos of Vince’s life with both of his wives, he continues to wear both his wedding rings and always states how lucky he is to have been blessed with two happy marriages.
After Rachel has made coffee, she sits in on our interview until it is time for her to leave for an appointment. She has been helping her husband with his novel by proof-reading his first fictional foray.
“It’s semi political; it’s about two couples and relationships which evolve from an arms contract between Britain and India. The novel went off to publishers yesterday. It may not get any further: they may tell me this is awful and put it in the bin,” laughs Vince.
If his career as a novelist doesn’t take off, he has university work to occupy him, including a new role at St Mary’s in Twickenham.
“I have a visiting professorship at the LSE and Nottingham and I’ve just been appointed to a similar post at St Mary’s, which is a very good university,” he explains, adding, “The new Vice Chancellor, Francis Campbell, is a real ball of energy and creativity and I really like the atmosphere. Their Pro Vice Chancellor is Ruth Kelly, who used to be the Secretary of State for Education in the Blair government; I get on very well with her and she has all kinds of ideas for building up the university. I will do a bit of teaching and course development – I did a lecture there last week.”
This all sounds exciting, but doesn’t he miss being at the heart of government?
“I miss being a local MP and I miss my job in the cabinet – I felt we were doing some really useful things. I don’t miss being in Parliament – I found a lot of the stuff that goes on there increasingly pointless.”
Of course, the “stuff” everyone is discussing in Parliament at the moment is the EU referendum and, as Vince said, back in January 2015, that the Prime Minister’s intention to hold a popular vote on whether the UK should remain in or out of the EU was “actually dangerous”, I wonder what his latest thoughts are now that a date has been set for June 23.
“I am very much an ‘in’ person. I think the consequences of leaving, certainly in the short run, would be quite serious upheaval and uncertainty, and would probably do quite a bit of damage,” he says, adding, “I am pleased to see that my successor (the Conservative MP Dr Tania Mathias) is of the same view, she seems to be on the Cameron wing of the party, which I think is good news for the area.”
And what of Boris’s big EU reveal? (We are talking just days after Johnson made his announcement in favour of Brexit, widely seen as a bid for the top job.)
“I used to have quite a high regard for him but I think the way he’s treated this, which is frivolous and personal rather than in the national interest, diminishes him,” Vince says scathingly, “It’s too transparent.”
And what of that other political character who continues to intrigue the nation – Jeremy Corbyn?
Again, Cable doesn’t mince words. “I don’t rate him. He’s a perfectly affable guy who took a principled position on a few issues – the Iraq war was one – but as a leader of the Labour Party he’s a complete disaster and is alienating large numbers of voters and I think, because he’s so bad, it’s bad for the country because we don’t have an effective opposition. We’ve all this stuff going on at the moment in the NHS and the destruction of social housing, and an effective leader of the Labour Party would be taking Cameron to the cleaners but he’s just not getting through. So I fear it’s a very, very bad story.”
One can’t help thinking that Parliament without Vince must be a much duller place, but I have heard that there is another Cable with a social conscience on the rise, in the form of his 13-year-old grandson Ayrton who has won virtually every major award in the UK for youth social action and been nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize.
“Ayrton is a very creative, interesting young man,” says Vince, “He had reading issues, so he expressed himself by making films and one of the little films he made, which was about animal cruelty, was taken up by a charity, and he actually spoke in Parliament about it. He’s a good speaker and a very good communicator. He’s become a social media celebrity, more famous than me actually!”
His grandson may be more popular on social media, but Vince is still our favourite former politico, both locally and nationally, and he still has a great deal to say and, it is clear, to do. Indeed with a conspiratorial smile at Rachel who tuts when I mention the R-word, he states for the avoidance of doubt, “My wife will confirm, I am far from having retired or becoming redundant: I am very fully employed!”
You can purchase Sir Vince Cable's latest book on life after the financial crisis on amazon here
If you are interested in attending or volunteering with Together as One you can check out the charity website here
Why not check out one of our other great interviews, like the time we caught up with Roger Moore
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