The winner of the 2009 Political Impact Award is...
Updated on 12 February 2009
Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman Vince Cable wins the Channel 4 News Political Impact Award 2009, as voted by our viewers.
Cable beat off competition from London Mayor Boris Johnson, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the career-comeback expert, Business Secretary Lord Peter Mandelson.
The runner-up was Oxford coroner Andrew Walker, who refused to bow to government pressure to tone down damning criticisms of the Ministry of Defence in his verdicts on the deaths of servicemen.
You can watch the Channel 4 Political Awards, presented by Jon Snow, on Saturday 14 February at 7pm on Channel 4.
Channel 4 News viewers were invited to decide the winner earlier this year in a public online vote.
Cable joins the illustrious ranks of former winners, including Dr David Kelly, chef Jamie Oliver, Boris Johnson and the Countryside Alliance.
Seeing the recession coming: a profile
Few politicians can reliably claim to have seen the recession coming, but Vince Cable is one of them.
The housing market bubble and the surge in household debt were among his key battlegrounds long before the credit started to crunch.
The collapse of British banks - and the subsequent recapitalisation process - brought Cable even closer to the forefront.
He was heralded by many for exposing the alleged indecisiveness of both the government and the Tories on economic issues, and crisis management.
Cable, 65, was the man who skewered Gordon Brown in the Commons thus: "The House has noticed the prime minister's remarkable transformation in the last few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean, creating chaos out of order rather than order out of chaos."
The ban on short-selling bank stocks was seemingly another political victory for Cable in 2008.
His attacks on hedge funds "hunting in packs" to drive down bank shares appeared in tune with a populist backlash against the "short-selling spivs" deemed responsible for forcing HBOS into a takeover.
It is claimed Cable has done more to influence government policy - and capture accurately the public's mood - than any Liberal politician for decades.
The results
Politicians' politician
- Peter Mandelson (winner)
- Diane Abbott
- John Bercow
- George Osborne
Opposition Politician
- Vince Cable (winner)
- David Cameron
- Kenneth Clarke
- Nadine Dorries
- Baroness Hollis (winner)
- Michael Clapham
- Iain Duncan Smith
- Frank Field
- Lord Adonis (winner)
- Lord Avebury
- Lord Davies of Oldham
- Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
- Sir Bernard Crick (winner)
- David Davis
- June Sarpong
- The Hugh Young Papers:
Thirty Years of British Politics - off the Record
Huge Young (Allen Lane) (winner) - Political Suicide:
The Conservatives' Voyage into the Wilderness
Norman Fowler (Politico's Publishing) - Cameron on Cameron: Conversations with Dylan Jones David Cameron and Dylan Jones (Fourth Estate)
- Prezza: My Story - Pulling No Punches
John Prescott (Headline Review) - Speaking for Myself: the Autobiography
Cherie Blair (Little Brown)
- Prescott: The Class System and Me, BBC2 (winner)
- Dave Brown, cartoonist, The Independent
- Have I Got News for You, BBC1
