Business secretary warns prime minister 'risks inflaming extremism' after saying immigration can unsettle communities
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Vince Cable believes David Cameron has come close to breaching the coalition agreement in his speech on immigration. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
In the old days cabinet ministers tended to resign before criticising the prime minister. If they wanted to go a step further and warn that the prime minister "risks inflaming extremism" then they would probably clear out of politics altogether.
The old days ended in May last year when the Tories formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. That explains why Vince Cable is still in place as business secretary after telling the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that the prime minister's speech on immigration is "very unwise".
This is what Cable told Kuenssberg:
I do understand there is an election coming but talk of mass immigration risks inflaming the extremism to which he and I are both strongly opposed.
The intervention by Cable provided a reminder of his potency as a political force. As a reluctant convert to the coalition, after concluding that the parliamentary arithmetic ruled out a coalition with his natural soul mates in the Labour party, Cable provided the Lib Dem grit in the cabinet. This was of enormous significance to Nick Clegg after he decided to launch the coalition with the Dave & Nick love-in in the Downing Street garden last May.
The business secretary's special place appeared to end in December when he told two undercover journalists from the Daily Telegraph that he had "declared war" on Rupert Murdoch over his attempts to take full control over BSkyB. But Cable has shown this morning he still knows how to grab the limelight.
Cable believes he is on strong ground because he thinks the prime minister has come close to breaching the coalition agreement in today's speech. The agreement devoted just half a page to immigration and set no targets.
The business secretary believes the following remarks by the prime minister run against the spirit, if not the letter, of the coalition agreement. In the early part of the speech the prime minister said:
I believe controlling immigration and bringing it down is of vital importance to the future of our country.
That's why during the election campaign, Conservatives made a clear commitment to the British people that we would aim to reduce net migration to the levels we saw in the 1980s and 1990s.
Now we are in government, we are on track to meet that aim.
Towards the end of the speech the prime minister repeated the immigration target figures in the Tory manifesto which were not included in the coalition agreement:
If we take the steps set out today, and deal with all the different avenues of migration, legal and illegal, then levels of immigration can return to where they were in the 1980s and 90s, a time when immigration was not a front rank political issue.
And I believe that will mean net migration to this country will be in the order of tens of thousands each year, not the hundreds of thousands every year that we have seen over the last decade.
This is why Cable said the following to Kuenssberg:
The reference to the tens of thousands of immigrants rather than hundreds of thousands is not part of the coalition agreement, it is Tory party policy only.
Cameron's speech was run by Clegg's staff in No 10 who "noted rather than approved" it, according to Lib Dem sources. Close attention was paid to the wording in the sections that have upset Cable because Theresa May, the home secretary, is said to push this to the limits in private on a regular basis.
Clegg believes the prime minister has not breached the coalition agreement because Cameron said he believed that immigration would be brought down to the tens of thousands. If the prime minister had set the figure as a target then Clegg believes he would have breached the coalition agreement.
Clegg believes that the specific policies outlined today by the prime minister, particularly on universities, show Lib Dem successes in moderating their Tory colleagues in government. The deputy prime minister would not use the same tone as the prime minister but accepts that neither party leader can dictate the tone of eachother's speeches.
There is some irritation in Lib Dem circles with Cable who has, according to some figures, fallen into a trap set by the Tories. They believe the prime minister will be delighted that he is now under fire from the most left wing of the five Lib Dem cabinet minsters.
The Cable intervention comes at a defining moment for the coalition as both party leaders face pressure from their parties to assert distinctive identities. Cameron told the Conservative 1922 committee that he would do more to address the issue of immigration amid deep unease among Tory MPs at the coalition.
Clegg, who is struggling to recover after the party's U-turn on university tuition fees, knows he needs to move away from the Nick & Dave love-in. That help explains why he is taking such a strong line on the NHS reforms and why, despite some irritation with him, Cable is free to speak out.