Vince Cable: ‘Historically, the coalition will be seen as a success’ – interview

Before, he was known as St Vince, the straight-talking, ballroom-dancing MP who predicted the crash. Five years on, Vince Cable is without a job - and ready to lift the lid on the Tories

• Read an exclusive extract from Vince Cable's new book, After The Storm

Vince Cable is looking remarkably well for a dead man - politically dead, that is. The May election deprived him not just of his cabinet job as business secretary, but of the Twickenham seat he had held for the Lib Dems for 18 years. There is no more brutal arena than politics; no end more sudden or public. He walked into his count at just before 5am on 8 May as one of the most powerful men in the country; he walked out humbled, his majority of 12,000 overturned. At 72, he says he will not contest another election.

The only word I can conjure up when we meet at his home in the shadow of Twickenham rugby ground is bereavement. Was that how it felt? "It was initially," he says in his precise, slightly strangulated voice. "But I adjusted to the new world very quickly." He has finished a book on economic policy since the crash, taken a holiday in Corsica (he is tanned: his wife Rachel says he looks 10 years younger), joined a gym and returned to ballroom dancing - a long-time love, as the trophies on top of a cupboard in the living room attest.

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I wasn't involved in a leadership coup. People who wanted change wanted me. It was guilt by association

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