Sir Vince Cable's Biography
Sir Vince Cable was born in York on 9 May 1943.
At grammar school he joined the Liberal Party.
Cable studied Natural Sciences and Economics at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, where he was President of the Union and then gained a PhD at Glasgow University.
After university, he joined the Labour Party, for whom he stood as an MP for Glasgow Hillhead in the June 1970 election, but lost.
He was a councillor in Glasgow in the early 1970s and was a special adviser to John Smith.
In 1982, he switched allegiances to the SDP.
Vince Cable contested the York constituency twice and Twickenham once, before being elected as MP for Twickenham in May 1997.
A couple of years earlier he had been appointed chief economist at Shell.
In 2003, Mr Cable became the Liberal Democrats’ shadow Chancellor.
After Sir Menzies Campbell resigned in 2007, Cable was briefly the LibDem's acting leader.
After the 2010 election the government was formed through a Conservative - LibDem coalition and Sir Vince Cable joined the Cabinet as Business Secretary.
After being secretly recorded saying "I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win", Cable was relieved of his responsibility for media affairs including ruling on Rupert Murdoch's possible takeovers.
In May 2017, however, he was re-elected as an MP.
On 20 July 2017, Vince Cable became leader of the Liberal Democrats unopposed, taking over from Tim Farron, who had followed Nick Clegg.
In March 2019, it was revealed that Sir Vincent Cable would be stepping down as leader of the LibDems after the May local elections.
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