Sir John Vincent Cable (born 9 May 1943) is a British politician who was Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2017 to 2019. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Twickenham from 1997 to 2015 and from 2017 to 2019. He also served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and President of the Board of Trade from 2010 to 2015.
Cable studied natural science and economics at Cambridge, and after graduation was an Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Fellow working as a finance officer in the Kenya Treasury under President Jomo Kenyatta. He then lectured in economics at Glasgow University and obtained a PhD studying part-time. He worked in the Diplomatic Service; directed research at the ODI; was a Special Adviser to the Commonwealth Secretary-General; headed the international economics programme at Chatham House; and worked for Shell Group Planning, becoming Chief Economist.
Politically, Cable was initially active in the Labour Party and served as a Glasgow City councillor in the early 1970s. He later served as special adviser to then-Trade Secretary John Smith. In 1982, he defected to the newly formed Social Democratic Party, which later merged with the Liberal Party to become the Liberal Democrats. After standing unsuccessfully for Parliament four times in Glasgow, York (twice) and Twickenham, he was elected for Twickenham in 1997. He was quickly appointed the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson, and was later elected as Deputy Leader in 2006. Cable resigned from both of these positions in May 2010 after being appointed as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in the coalition government. He lost his seat in 2015, although later regained it in 2017. Cable subsequently stood in the leadership election to replace Tim Farron, and was elected unopposed.
In May 2019, Cable led the Liberal Democrats to their best national electoral performance since the 2010 election, gaining fifteen seats in the European Parliament election. This followed a campaign in which the party ran on an anti-Brexit platform. He subsequently announced his intention to retire from politics, and stood down as leader on 22 July 2019, upon the election of Jo Swinson; he stood down from Parliament at the 2019 general election. After leaving parliament, Cable was a visiting professor in Practice at the LSE and a distinguished fellow at the ODI. He was appointed vice-president of the European Movement in 2022. He is a company director: chair of Element 2, the hydrogen infrastructure company and chair of the e-freight 2030 consortium.
Cable was born in York, to a Conservative-supporting family. His father started his working life as a craftsman at Rowntree's and became a lecturer in Building Science at York Technical College. He became a leading figure in his Union (the NAS) and in apprenticeship training. His mother, Edith, initially packed chocolates at Terry's and later became a York Minster guide.
Cable attended Poppleton Road primary school and Nunthorpe Grammar School (now Millthorpe School) where he became Head Boy. He then attended Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he initially studied Natural Sciences and later switched to Economics. He was the President of the Cambridge Union in 1965. He was also a committee member and later President-elect of the Cambridge University Liberal Club, but he resigned from the Liberal Party before taking up the office of President. Whilst at Cambridge, he was a contemporary of the Cambridge Mafia. In 1966, at the end of his studies at the University of Cambridge, Cable was appointed as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow (ODI Nuffield Fellow) working in Kenya.
He graduated in 1973 with a PhD in Economics from the University of Glasgow on economic integration and industrialisation, studying part-time while lecturing at the university. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate at Kingston University in 2023.
After leaving Cambridge, from 1966 to 1968, Cable worked as a Finance Officer in the Kenya Treasury. Then, while lecturing at Glasgow on international economics, under Professor Alec Nove, he conducted research on economic integration working on the newly formed Central American Common Market. He was then seconded to the Diplomatic Service as a 1st Secretary working under Hugh Carless in the Latin American Department of the Foreign Office including a period attached to the CBI responsible for trade missions to South America.
He then directed research at the Overseas Development Institute working mainly on trade policy and economic development in India writing Protectionism and Industrial Decline, The Commerce of Culture and on EU trade policy. During this period, he served as Special Adviser to John Smith when the latter was Trade Secretary; a consultant to the World Bank on trade policy, working with Bela Balassa and Helen Hughes; and India author for the Economist Intelligence Unit.
He went to work, in 1983, as Special Adviser to the Commonwealth Secretary General, Shridath 'Sonny' Ramphal. He oversaw the work of expert groups on debt and on climate change and work on international capital markets leading to the establishment of the Commonwealth Equity Fund. He published, with B. Persaud, Developing with Foreign Investment.
Cable served in an official capacity at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting of 1983 in Delhi, witnessing "private sessions at first hand" involving Indira Gandhi, then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Lee Kuan Yew, and Bob Hawke among others. He was also present at the summits of 1985, 1987, and 1989. In the same period, he contributed to the Brandt Commission, the Palme Commission, and the UN's Brundtland Commission.
From the 1980s onwards, Cable authored and co-wrote numerous publications in favour of globalisation, free trade, and economic integration such as Protectionism and Industrial Decline, The Commerce of Culture, and Developing with Foreign Investment.
Cable worked, in Group Planning, for the oil company Royal Dutch Shell from 1990 to 1997, serving as its Chief Economist between 1995 and 1997. His role at Shell came under scrutiny as the company was accused of playing a role in a turbulent era of Nigerian politics during the dictatorship of General Sani Abacha.
He served for a period (1993–95) as Director of the Economics Programme at Chatham House publishing work on globalisation and economic integration including the book Globalisation and Global Governance. He also wrote for the new think tank, Demos, and was one of the earliest writers to anticipate the Politics of Identity.
During his period in parliament from 1997 he wrote extensively including on economic subjects with the best-selling book The Storm (2009) on the 2008 financial crisis; and After the Storm (2016).
He was made a visiting professor of economics in 2016 at the University of Nottingham, a professor in Practice at the London School of Economics in 2021 a visiting professor at Sheffield and at St Mary's University.
In 2017, Cable became a strategic advisor on the World Trade Board for the annual World Trade Symposium co-organised by Misys and FT Live.
His early life and career is detailed in the book Free Radical. At university, Cable was a member of the Liberal Party but then joined the Labour Party in 1966. In 1970, he contested Glasgow Hillhead for Labour, but failed to unseat the sitting Conservative MP, Tam Galbraith. The same year, Cable stood for election to the Corporation of Glasgow in the Partick West ward, but failed to be elected. He became a Labour councillor in 1971, representing Maryhill ward, and stood down in 1974. He was a contributor to Gordon Brown's The Red Paper on Scotland. In 1979, he sought the Labour Party nomination for Hampstead, losing to Ken Livingstone, who was unsuccessful in taking the seat.