Quintin Jardine's blog

This morning’s Torygraph leads with a report that Vince Cable is demanding that the Chancellor includes in his next Budget what he and others refer to as a Mansion Tax. There was a time, before the last election, when Vince had a reputation as a wise old elder statesman; that was when people didn’t know a hell of a lot about him. In office he has turned from being Winnie the Pooh’s friend Owl, into his other mate Eeyore, but this doesn’t mean that he’s forgotten how to grab a headline. On the face of it, there is merit in what the former Glasgow Labour councillor and member in his lifetime of four political parties (the further left the better as long as it’s electable) is proposing: a 1% annual levy on homes worth more than £2m. Why not? People who own great such big piles deserve to pay a bit more than the rest of us. But they do already, VInce, in income tax. What you’re proposing, taking from the rich to give in theory to the poor, might sound as if it’s sprung straight from Sherwood Forest, but I’ve never been able to gloss over the fact that Robin Hood in the unlikely event that he ever existed as depicted, was an out and out thief. And if you believe that it is, as you say, ‘a very good idea’, then so are you.

Fortunately, the Chancellor is not going to buy into the Cable wheeze, and I doubt very much whether his leader, the self-aggrandised deputy Prime Minister will either. But it does show you the sort of character who has slithered into high office. The principle of taxing people on what they earn and what they buy is well accepted. The principle of taxing them, even the super-wealthy, on what they have, is not, never has been and never will be. Dr John Vincent Cable is a manipulator with a Red Box, and the sooner it’s taken away from him the better. Anything I have heard or read from the man leads me to the conclusion that if he had real integrity, and wasn’t in love with the power of office, he would leave the Lib Dems and rejoin the Labour Party. But he doesn’t, he is, and he won’t.