Guido has been saying for some time that Vince Cable’s reputation as a seer is much overstated and that his reputation is cashing cheques his actual policy account can’t cover. His ability to provide authoritative sounding soundbites to journalists is fantastic.  Hacks never bother to check his prognostications and previous policy flips (who knows what the LibDem policy is on anything besides PR?)  He thus gets a free ride in comparison to Labour and the Tories.

So it will be worth tuning into Straight Talk tomorrow where by all accounts Vince Cable gets a mauling from Andrew Neil about his history of changing his position on a range of issues during the financial crisis and Brillo gets him to admit that he was wrong last autumn to support the merger of Lloyds TSB and HBOS.  Vince admits to Brillo when challenged “you’re right – perfectly fair comment that my first reaction was not the right one.”

Brillo also spotted that in Cable’s just released policy paper for Reform he is proposing to cut items that were only earmarked by Nick Clegg and Vince Cable in February as part of a planned increase of £6.7 bn in spending on childcare and education.

By all accounts it is worth tuning into Straight Talk on BBC News tomorrow night to see Brillo hold Cable’s feet to the fire for all his flip-flopping on economic policy.

UPDATE : Sam Coates over at Red box has spotted another Cable incoherency.

UPDATE II : There is of course the whole Darth Cable / Brillo Skywalker angle about this: Cable was Neil’s economics tutor at Glasgow.  Now the circle is complete, the student is the inquisitor.  The force is strong…