Between 2005 and 2010 the Liberal Democrats sometimes seemed to flirt with self-destruction, ousting two weighty and popular leaders, Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell, in favour of the little-known Nick Clegg. Throughout that time, Vince Cable increasingly found himself as the party's sole lifeline to the public, a senior Liberal Democrat of substance and radical instincts, as well as a good performer who rose to the occasion as a national figure of unusual authority when markets imploded in 2008. So important was Mr Cable to the Lib Dems that, at the last election, he was given equal billing with Mr Clegg in their campaign.
Yet since the election Mr Cable has struggled to find a role and regain his touch. Instinctively more a Lib Dem of the left than the right, insofar as such terms are useful labels in his party's theology, Mr Cable has kept relatively quiet since entering the coalition government. A cabinet job as business secretary, in a department permanently struggling to escape the Treasury's long shadow (and which he once aimed to abolish) probably felt like an anticlimax for a man who had long dreamed of being chancellor. Observers have thus sometimes judged Mr Cable to be unhappy to be sharing power with the Conservatives and eclipsed by the self-evident comfort and confidence of Mr Clegg. When journalists speculate about which Lib Dem might be the first to jump the coalition ship, the first name is often Mr Cable's.
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