Vince Cable in trouble again - this time for what he didn't say

Only a few days after stumbling through the minefield of coalition policy on immigration, Vince Cable is in trouble again. Unlike his discomfort over his attack on Cameron's immigration speech last week, this little difficulty is over what Cable failed to say.

To the consternation of his Scottish Liberal Democrat handlers, Cable pointedly failed to claim to an audience of business executives in Edinburgh last night that his party had protected Britain from the worst Thatcherite excesses of the Tories by forming the UK government coalition.

One guiding rule for reporting political speeches is "check against delivery". It's generally printed on the bottom in bold capitals on any advance copy of a politician's speech: best make sure the speaker said what the text says before writing the story.

You would imagine a political party would follow this to the letter. Not so the Scottish Lib Dems.

Reporters were given an A4 press release of the remarks which Cable was billed to make to the Chamber of Commerce – an audience of company directors, investment bankers and executives.

Those included: "I remember the negative side of Thatcherism: the poll tax, mass unemployment and the claims that there is no such thing as society." And: "That's why I'm glad the Tories aren't in power themselves at Westminster. We have stopped the Tories behaving like they did under Thatcher."

As Cable stood up to deliver a keynote speech to the Edinburgh chamber of commerce, the party's press office @scotlibdems dutifully tweeted the expected highlights of the speech.

In two tweets at 5.30pm on Monday night, the party reported:

It quickly added:

Cable just about kept to that script in a BBC Scotland interview just before he spoke – talking of "restraining" the Tories. But he failed to deliver them to the intended audience. The Scotsman splashed the story in Tuesday's edition, giving it an implausible spin by prominently reporting opposition claims that Cable was "gagged" by Nick Clegg.

Not likely. Cable was accompanied by Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem MP for Orkney and Shetland and the party's Scottish general election co-ordinator, and George Lyon MEP, the party's Holyrood election co-ordinator, and a party executive.

No. Cable was under pressure to make these remarks because the Scottish party is in deep trouble with the voters over Clegg's coalition with Cameron. Its poll ratings are down to a catastrophic 8%, with voters deserting the party; the Scottish Lib Dem leader, Tavish Scott, is in despair. He is frantically trying to portray his part of the federal party as distinctively and instinctively anti-Tory.

But Cable baulked: not only would a Chamber of Commerce audience be unreceptive, but he may have figured such "dog whistle" remarks risked appearing fatuous and banal.

Instead, perhaps guided by his experience after last week's slap-down over immigration, Cable decided to shrug off his minders' demands and chose discretion over grandstanding.