BOOK REVIEW:Free Radical: A Memoir by Vince Cable; Atlantic Books; London; £19.99 (€22)

CLARITY AND certainty are greatly sought after in the debate over the economic crisis. As deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons, Dr Vincent Cable has cornered a good share of the market in these commodities.

Cable is a former chief economist with Shell Oil, which gives him the academic background and expertise, as well as business experience.

“Vince”, as he prefers to be called, is a long-time political practitioner who spent over a decade with the Labour Party before joining Roy Jenkins’s Social Democrats, which later merged with the Liberals to become the “Lib Dems”.

He ran in elections for 27 years before making it to Westminster. Despite being of an age when others might be cultivating their gardens, he is engaged in a constant round of political and media engagements, including an appearance on the popular TV series Strictly Come Dancing.

It is a mark of Cable's newfound celebrity status that this is his second book in a year (well-timed for the Christmas market). Reviewing The Storm: The World Economic Crisis and What It Meansfor this newspaper last May, Fine Gael Senator Paschal Donohoe described it as "a cautionary tale of over-reliance on large banks and rising house-prices [which] is extremely relevant to our own domestic difficulties".

The current book is mainly a memoir, but concludes with an analysis of the British economic situation.

There are some striking parallels with this country, eg when he writes that “there was a passionate attachment to property ownership as the basis of personal wealth and self-esteem, which has been shown to be just as vulnerable to boom and bust as any other speculative mania”.

Sounds all too familiar. So, too, does his description of “a long consumer boom with rising expectations of physical comfort, more leisure and more travel, which was underpinned by excessive household debt and the depletion of environmental resources”.

And then there is the financial services industry, which, he writes, “was incubating self-destructive folly and greed and has inflicted great damage on the economy”.

In an Irish context, Cable’s solutions are reminiscent of the policies of our own Labour Party. Given his views on bankers, it is difficult to see him supporting the establishment of the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).

Cable first stood for election in the famed Glasgow Hillhead constituency in 1970 and finally won a seat in the House of Commons in 1997. Having spent so long getting there, his disillusionment with aspects of the parliamentary process was all the greater on arrival.

Again, there are echoes of the Irish scene. He writes that parliament is “much-diminished in status and influence” and that he was “surprised to discover how few MPs and ministers know how to speak in public without a script prepared by civil servants or a researcher”.

As a novice MP, it didn’t take him long to realise that, “beyond the set-piece occasions, like prime minister’s questions and the budget, there is little drama in the main chamber”.

But he eventually discovered also that “parliament provides a unique platform [to] those who are patient and creative”. A touch of humour helps, of course, as in his description of Gordon Brown’s “remarkable transformation in the past few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean – creating chaos out of order, rather than order out of chaos”.

He set about acquiring expertise on the latest economic developments, particularly in the area of personal finance. He quickly decided that becoming embroiled in the obscure minutiae of legislation was a waste of time. And he realised that the news media provided a better stage than the chamber of the House of Commons.

As well as being bright and articulate, he has another essential quality in a successful politician: accessibility. Even on the top of a mountain during a holiday in the Lake District, Vince Cable’s phone was on and he took a call from an eager journalist.

The early, autobiographical chapters are interesting in a different way. His first wife, Olympia, was a member of Kenya’s Asian community who had come to England to work. Both their fathers frowned on the relationship, and the book provides an insight into the difficulties faced by couples from diverse backgrounds when a parent on each side disapproves.

But the relationship survived and thrived. Olympia was a successful academic in her own right as well as being, as we see from photographs in the book, a considerable beauty. The sadness of her death from cancer in 2001 permeates this memoir. Happily, the author has found love again with his second wife, Rachel.

In the course of a varied career, he spent two years at the Foreign Office and, on a visit to Caracas, was interviewed and turned down for membership of MI6.

When he worked with Shell, the company was in turmoil over the hanging of the Nigerian environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and he gives a penetrating insight into the oil giant’s corporate culture.

Despite all his intelligence, ability and boundless energy, Vince Cable’s Lib Dem affiliation makes it rather unlikely he will ever get into power so he can put his many ideas into practice: under the Irish political system he would have a much better chance.

Deaglán de Bréadún is political correspondent and author of The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace in Northern Irelandpublished by Collins Press, Cork (Second Edition)