A man called Cable

Political life is full of ironies and surprises. Some pleasant and some not. While the Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil has broken all records by polling the highest vote during the recent Euro elections, many Nationalist activists are quite rightly blaming him for his supreme fiasco after having spearheaded and masterminded their dismal election campaign as unofficial chief strategist.

Meanwhile, Paul Borg Oliver, arguably the most underperforming Nationalist general secretary in recent years, seems to have sailed through this political tsunami relatively unscathed for the simple reason that he was virtually locked within a closet till election day proper and only brought out to face the media the day after when it was common knowledge that he had nothing to do with the PN's resounding defeat since he has long been sidelined and marginalised.

On the international scene, while the former US President George W. Bush was hell bent on constantly projecting and flaunting power, President Barack Obama has offered a new beginning in relations between the United States and the Muslim world by talking about humility rather than power and even quoting from the Qur'an at the end of his Cairo speech.

In Italy, while everyone gossiped about how the international media made a meal of a number of photos that showed that Silvio Berlusconi's close friend, an eccentric former Czech Prime Minister, was allegedly photographed naked and in a state of arousal next to the Italian Premier's swimming pool, the voters still preferred to support a macho septuagenarian than an opposition that seems to have lost the plot completely.

Meanwhile, in the UK, although the British Labour Party and the Tories have always been considered to be the two main political forces - something put seriously in doubt by the recent poll and the BLP's implosion - the only politician whose analysis of the recent world economic crisis has been taken seriously and is still being read extensively is Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats' chief economic spokesman since 2003, having previously served as chief economist for Shell from 1995 to 1997. He was also acting leader of the party prior to the election of Nick Clegg.

While none of the so-called two major parties have managed to come up with any deep or serious analysis of this crisis, Mr Cable has not only written a book all about it called The Storm but he has also managed to take the bookseller lists by storm until this present day.

At a time when politicians in many countries - particularly Britain at the moment - have lost much of their lustre and integrity, Mr Cable is rated highly as the man who gives politics a good name even by people who might traditionally vote for the big parties.

Everyone knows where the Daily Telegraph's sentiments lie - very much close to Toryland - and, yet, they had no qualms about describing him as the sage of the credit crunch for having warned about the collapse in the housing market before prices started to fall, argued for the nationalisation of Northern Rock before it became government policy, predicted the banking crisis before banks stopped lending money and for many years was alarmed by the growing amounts of personal debt in Britain.

The man does not just analyse the crisis but he also suggests how one should respond to the challenges it brings.

There might be a lesson for us Maltese in his conclusion that a new generation of home buyers, property investors and builders had convinced itself that prices only ever go up and that property was a guaranteed way to accumulate wealth.

By now I am sure that many of you have heard of "ninja" loans - the money dished out by US sub-prime lenders to those with no income, no jobs and no assets.

Mr Cable goes one step further. He concludes that the growth of the buy-to-let market and of the market in second homes was in part due to speculation that prices would continue to rise, generating nominal wealth and the potential for capital gains.

But the most incisive conclusion of his relatively short but craftily written book is that what made the British housing price bubble so dangerous in economic terms was that it was so highly leveraged (that is, supported by debt).

These are the kind of misguided policies that generate hubris.

The same kind of hubris that has left the Nationalist Party in a state of denial, trying to console itself by the fact that it has retained the same share of the votes as in 2004 (while conveniently forgetting the widening gap between the two parties) and the ridiculous assertion that the Labour Party this time round polled fewer votes than during last year's general election. All this at a time when it is common knowledge that Euro elections generate far less interest than general elections do.

Mr Brincat is a Labour member of Parliament.