Nick Clegg Biography

DO YOU WANT TO BE IN MY GANG?
In the spring before the 2010 UK election, Nick Clegg opened fire with both barrels on the bankers, their bonuses, and the bailouts that had broken Britain economically. He condemned bankers for behaving like “Arthur Scargill in pinstripes”. (Scargill was the doomed Coal Miners Trade Union leader who crippled the country). The UK banking system collapsed so spectacularly that taxpayers had to give trillions. But despite liabilities four and half times the size of the entire UK economy, the bankers continued to give themselves billion pound bonuses. If elected, Nick Clegg said he was going to tax and regulate them into submission. And the taxpayers of Britain briefly hoped.

By promising strong regulation and redistributive taxation, he opened up some clear distance between himself and his political rivals. He deftly exploited both the feeling that Gordon Brown’s time as Chancellor had made the New Labour Prime Minister too sympathetic to the bankers, and the fact that a lot of David Cameron’s Conservative contacts came from the City. Nick Clegg’s ability to say what the electorate were desperate to hear, but the pragmatic political classes were only willing to posture on, exposed the stagnant state of Britain’s two party system.

But into the vacuum he created, the other two parties rushed in, in an attempt to steal back any swing voters. This was always the problem with being the third political party. Anything truly original is ignored, or copied, but rarely credited. It’s understandable then that his Birmingham Spring Conference was an attempt to differentiate himself, and his party. He called Labour the Party of ‘many disasters’ offering a ‘second trip on the Titanic’. And in reference to their funding by the non-domicile, Lord Ashcroft, he called the Tories “the word’s first offshore political party.”

But there was one thing that clearly differentiated the Liberal Democrats from their political rivals in the run up to the 2010 election. Both Labour and Conservative MPs were found to have flipped their homes, the practice where a second home is nominated to obtain extra allowances. Not one Liberal Democrat MP had been involved in this contemptible practice.

NICK CLEGG: WHO HE?
The party of Nick Clegg has unfortunately suffered in the shade cast by the other two parties and as a leader of the Liberal Democrats, he struggled to emerge from the long shadows cast by ex Royal Marine, Paddy ‘Pants Down’ Ashdown, and the charismatic, but flawed, Charles Kennedy. The sex and alcohol scandals of these two undoubtedly influenced the election of the safe, but soporific, Sir Menzies Campbell. But could Clegg leapfrog these leaders and become leader of the country?

His best hope is to keep catching the national mood as he did with bankers. Another example of his crystal-ball like abilities is when he promised to abandon Trident in June 2009. This was long before Obama managed to secure a 30% reduction in the US and Russian nuclear stockpile in March 2010. Clegg’s bold break with the other parties Defence policies made them look Cold-War fixated and backward looking and most importantly, several billion out of pocket. And despite his Liberal tag, Clegg had no problem in promoting right leaning policies such as compulsory English lessons for long-term immigrants. It was his campaigning for the right to retire in the UK for Britain’s Ghurkhas that showed his real problem is recognition.

He first took on Gordon Brown in March 2008 over the fact that these elite foreign foreigners were not allowed to settle in the country for which their countrymen had died. Clegg helped cause an embarrassing U-turn by the government but the victory is best remembered for the stoic faces of the brave Ghurkhas and the beautiful, battle-axe that was the much loved, Joanna Lumley, the celebrity front for the issue. Clegg’s early political backing never reaped the rewards it should have done.

Another issue on which he was ahead of the curve, but for which he has gained no reputational advantage, is on expenses. Long before the abuse of expenses by UK MPs became a national issue, Clegg had campaigned for and succeeded in improving the transparency and accountability of European Parliament expenses. And it’s his European outlook and background that most differentiates him from other English politicians.
 

ALL EU NEED TO KNOW
Nicholas William Peter Clegg was born on 7 January 1967 and raised in Buckinghamshire by his Dutch mother and half Russian father. His mother was nearly starved to death by the Japanese in one of their prisoner of war camps in colonial Indonesia. She went on to become a special needs teacher, supported by her husband, Nicolas, a banker.

As a young boy, Nick avidly read newspapers. He went to a fee paying school, Westminster, and excelled academically. His only school transgression was when he 16 and on a student exchange in Germany. In an act of uncharacteristic eco-vandalism, he set fire to a collection of rare, but flammable, cacti whilst drunk. His only other environmental transgression was when he knocked down a road runner when driving across America with the, soon to become documentary film-maker, Louis Theroux. Clegg’s jobs along the way included being an Austrian ski instructor and a Helsinki bank worker. He studied Social Anthropology at Cambridge and continued post graduate studies at University of Minnesota through a scholarship and then went to the College of Europe in Bruges. It was here that he met his future wife, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez. However, the multilingual Clegg had to learn Spanish as he only spoke fluent Dutch, French and German at the time.

He took various jobs after this including being a trainee journalist in New York with Christopher Hitchens and he was also a consultant in London and Budapest. He then worked in Brussels in the European Commission managing aid projects in Central Asia following collapse of communism. He acted as trade negotiator with China and Russia as a senior member of Tory Leon Britan’s office, the then vice president of the European Commission. In 1999, Clegg was elected Member of the European Parliament for East Midlands.

And in 2000, he married Miriam in her home town of Valladolid. She works as a Partner in an international trade lawyer firm and has laid down the law in the naming of their three children, Antonio, Alberto and Miguel. And despite the fact that he’s not religious, they are raising them as Catholics.

His grounded and rounded European outlook has had political benefits. Clegg’s European friendly approach helped persuade Conservative MEP Bill Newton Dunn to defect to the Lib Dems in 2000. (Clegg repeated this feat again in time for his spring 2010 conference which opened with the news that the former leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament, had defected over David Cameron’s extremist links.)

But after five years as an MEP, Clegg stood down in 2004 because of the strain on his family life. The following year, he took the less travel heavy job of Sheffield Hallam MP. His European experience helped make him Europe spokesman in Charles Kennedy’s shadow cabinet.

He was promoted to Home Affairs spokesperson when Mark Oaten was replaced over a sex scandal. And when alcoholism ended Kennedy’s leadership, and ageism ended that of Sir Menzies Campbell, Nick Clegg saw off contender Chris Huhne to be elected leader in Dec 2007. In May 2009, the Party overtook Labour in an opinion poll for first time since the party was called the SDP Liberal Alliance in the early 1980s. By making his leadership opponent into his shadow home secretary and keeping the interim leader, Vince, ‘the dude’, Cable, as his deputy leader and shadow Chancellor, Clegg created a formidable threesome.

Some would say that his 2010 election promises were the usual meaningless political promises: a fairer tax system, better education for all children etc, but they did show that he’d responded to criticism that previous pledges were shopping lists of promises. He had boiled down the list to a few essentials. Noticeable, however, by their absence was any mention of Afghanistan (he’s a liberal interventionist but believes Iraq was wrong), tuition fees (he believes university education should be free), and little on the NHS (he’d abolish targets but keep it free), and on the environment (surprising for a man whose university thesis was on the Green Movement and made it one of his twin priorities on becoming leader).

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER
Clegg reached what is arguably the pinnacle of his political career on 11 May 2010 when he became the Deputy Prime Minister of the UK and Lord President of the Council after reaching a coalition with the Conservative party, which had failed to win a majority in the 2010 general election.

He was also made the Minister for Constitutional and Political Reform, which was a key factor in the Liberal Democrats agreeing to form a coalition with the Tories.

On 5 July 2010, Clegg made his first mark on the government by unveiling plans to have fewer MPs and to hold a referendum to see if the country's voting system should be the Alternative Vote or the current First Past the Post system. In May 2011, the referendum was taken, enjoying 41 per cent turnout, but the No vote prevailed with a resounding 67.9 per cent of the vote.

Later that month, he became the first Liberal Democrat to undertake Prime Minister's Questions, which were first introduced in 1961. He caused controversy by attacking the Shadow Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, for illegally invading Iraq despite having expressed this view before. However, this was not in line with the government's take on the matter at the time.

Clegg has since undertaken this role on two more occasions. In October, he backtracked on his party's pledge to oppose tuition fee rises and stated that members of the Lib Dems could abstain from the vote. Looking at the Lord Browne review, which proposed increasing university fees to £9,000 a year, Clegg changed his mind as the poorest students would pay less and the wealthiest more.