Nick Clegg

Nicholas William Peter "Nick" Clegg,  born 7 January 1967 is a British Liberal Democrat politician who is the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Lord President of the Council and Minister for Constitutional and Political Reform in the coalition government of Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. Clegg is the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sheffield Hallam.

Clegg's first major elected position was as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the East Midlands from 1999 to 2004. He was elected Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam in the 2005 general election and became the Liberal Democrats' Home Affairs spokesperson in 2006. Clegg defeated Chris Huhne in the party's 2007 leadership election. Clegg became Deputy Prime Minister following the 2010 general election, when the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition government with the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister David Cameron. As well as his parliamentary roles, Clegg has contributed to many pamphlets and books on political issues.

Clegg was educated at Caldicott School in Buckinghamshire and Westminster School in London, followed by Robinson College at the University of Cambridge, where he studied Social Anthropology; he later studied at the University of Minnesota and the College of Europe in Belgium. He is married to Miriam González Durántez; they have three sons.

Clegg was born in Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire, in 1967, the third of four children. His father, Nicholas Clegg CBE, is chairman of United Trust Bank, and is a trustee of The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, where Ken Clarke was an adviser. Clegg's paternal grandmother, Kira von Engelhardt, was the daughter of a Baron from the multiethnic Imperial Russia, of German-Russian and Ukrainian origin, whose family fled the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Russian Revolution. One of his great-great-grandfathers, Ignaty Zakrevsky, was attorney general of the imperial Russian senate. One of his great-great aunts was the writer, Moura Budberg. Clegg's paternal grandfather, Hugh Anthony Clegg, was the editor of the British Medical Journal for 35 years.

Clegg's Dutch mother, Hermance van den Wall Bake, was, along with her family, interned by the Japanese military in Batavia (Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies. She met Clegg's father during a visit to England in 1956, and they married on 1 August 1959.

Clegg is multilingual: he speaks English, Dutch, French, German, and Spanish. His background has informed his politics. He says, "There is simply not a shred of racism in me, as a person whose whole family is formed by flight from persecution, from different people in different generations. It’s what I am. It’s one of the reasons I am a liberal. His Dutch mother instilled in him "a degree of scepticism about the entrenched class configurations in British society".

Clegg was educated at two independent schools: at Caldicott School in Farnham Royal in South Buckinghamshire, and later at Westminster School in Central London. As a 16-year-old exchange student in Munich, Germany, he was sentenced to a term of community service after he and a friend burned a collection of cacti belonging to a professor. When news of the incident was later reported during his time as Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Clegg said it was something he was "not proud" of.

He spent a gap year as a skiing instructor in Austria, before attending Robinson College, Cambridge at Cambridge University in 1986. Clegg studied Social Anthropology at Cambridge University and was active in the student theatre; he acted alongside Helena Bonham Carter in a play about AIDS, and under director Sam Mendes. He was captain of the college tennis team, and campaigned for the human rights organisation Survival International. Clegg spent summer 1989 as an office junior in Postipankki bank in Helsinki.

It has been reported that, at university, Clegg joined the Cambridge University Conservative Association between 1986 and 1987. Clegg has maintained he had "no recollection of that whatsoever".

After university he was awarded a scholarship to study for a year at the University of Minnesota, where he wrote a thesis on the political philosophy of the Deep Green movement. He then moved to New York City, where he worked as an intern under Christopher Hitchens at The Nation, a left-wing magazine.

Clegg next moved to Brussels, where he worked for six months as a trainee in the G24 co-ordination unit which delivered aid to the countries of the former Soviet Union. After the internship he took a second master's degree at the College of Europe in Bruges, a university for European studies in Belgium, where he met his wife, Miriam González Durántez, a lawyer and the daughter of a Spanish senator. Nick Clegg belonged to the "Mozart Promotion" at the College of Europe.

Between 1992–1993, he was employed by GJW, which lobbied on behalf of Libya.

In 1993, Clegg won the Financial Times' David Thomas Prize, in remembrance of an FT journalist killed on assignment in Kuwait in 1991. Clegg was the award's first recipient. He was later sent to Hungary, where he wrote articles about the mass privatisation of industries in the former communist bloc.

In April 1994, he took up a post at the European Commission, working in the TACIS aid programme to the former Soviet Union. For two years he was responsible for developing direct aid programmes in Central Asia and the Caucasus, worth €50 million. He was involved in negotiations with Russia on airline overflight rights, and launched a conference in Tashkent in 1993 that founded TRACECA—an international transport programme for the development of a Transport Corridor for Europe, the Caucasus and Asia. Vice President and Trade Commissioner Leon Brittan then offered Clegg a job in his private office, as a European Union policy adviser and speech writer. As part of this role, Clegg was in charge of the EC negotiating team on Chinese and Russian accession talks to the World Trade Organisation.

Clegg has written extensively, publishing and contributing to a large number of pamphlets and books. With Dr Richard Grayson he wrote a book in 2002 about the importance of devolution in secondary education systems, based on comparative research across Europe. The final conclusions included the idea of pupil premiums so that children from poorer backgrounds receive the additional resources their educational needs require.

Member of the European Parliament (1999–2004)

Clegg was selected as the lead Liberal Democrat euro-candidate for the East Midlands in 1998, and was first tipped as a politician to watch by Paddy Ashdown in 1999. On his election in 1999, he was the first Liberal parliamentarian elected in the East Midlands since Ernest Pickering was elected MP for Leicester West in 1931, and was credited with helping to significantly boost the Liberal Democrat poll rating in the region in the six months after his election. Clegg worked extensively during his time as an MEP to support the party in the region, not least in Chesterfield where Paul Holmes was elected as MP in 2001. Clegg helped persuade Conservative MEP Bill Newton Dunn to defect to the Liberal Democrats, with Newton Dunn subsequently succeeding him as MEP for the East Midlands.

As an MEP, Clegg co-founded the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform, which led calls for reforms to expenses, transparency and accountability in the European Parliament. He was made Trade and Industry spokesman for the European Liberal Democrat and Reform group (ELDR). In December 2000, Nick Clegg became the Parliament's Draftsman on a complex new EU telecoms law relating to "local loop unbundling"—opening-up telephone networks across Europe to competition. Clegg decided to leave Brussels in 2002, arguing in an article in The Guardian newspaper that the battle to persuade the public of the benefits of Europe was being fought at home, not in Brussels.

On leaving the European Parliament, Clegg joined political lobbying firm GPlus in April 2004 as a fifth partner:

“ It's especially exciting to be joining GPlus at a time when Brussels is moving more and more to the centre of business concerns. With the EU taking in ten more countries and adopting a new Constitution, organisations need more than ever intelligent professional help in engaging with the EU institutions. ”

Clegg worked on GPlus clients including The Hertz Corporation and British Gas.

In November 2004, then Sheffield Hallam MP Richard Allan announced his intention to stand down from parliament, Clegg was selected as the candidate for Sheffield Hallam constituency. He took up a part-time teaching position in the politics department of the University of Sheffield, combining it with ongoing EU consultancy work with GPlus. He also gave a series of seminar lectures in the International Relations Department of the University of Cambridge.

Clegg worked closely with Allan throughout the campaign in Sheffield Hallam – including starring in a local pantomime – and won the seat in the 2005 general election with over 50% of the vote, and a majority of 8,682. This result represents one of the smallest swings away from a party in a seat where an existing MP has been succeeded by a newcomer (4.3%) – see Sheffield constituency article. Clegg also campaigned locally on local transport, recycling, housing development and health. He established close links with both of the city's universities and opposed the closure of local services including fire stations and post offices. Before becoming leader of the party in 2007 he also served as treasurer and secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on National Parks, a particular interest given that his constituency includes part of the Peak District National Park.

Following his election to parliament, Clegg was promoted by leader Charles Kennedy to be the party's spokesperson on Europe, focusing on the party's preparations for an expected referendum on the European constitution and acting as deputy to Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Menzies Campbell. Clegg's ability to articulate liberal values at a very practical level quickly lent him prominence, with many already seeing him as a future Liberal Democrat leader. Following the resignation of Charles Kennedy on 7 January 2006, Clegg was touted as a possible leadership contender. He was quick to rule himself out however instead declaring his support for Sir Menzies Campbell ahead of his former colleague in the European Parliament Chris Huhne, with Campbell going on to win the ballot.

Clegg had been a signatory to the letter circulated by Vince Cable prior to Charles Kennedy's resignation, which stated his opposition to working under Kennedy's continued leadership. Some commentators claim that Clegg's support was due to a hope that he would then inherit the leadership when Campbell's age eventually forced him to retire – the so-called rule that "young cardinals elect old popes".

Liberal Democrats' Home Affairs spokesperson

After the 2006 leadership election, Clegg was promoted to be Home Affairs spokesperson, replacing Mark Oaten. In this job he spearheaded the Liberal Democrats' defence of civil liberties, proposing a Freedom Bill to repeal what he described as "unnecessary and illiberal legislation", campaigning against Identity Cards and the retention of innocent people's DNA, and arguing against excessive counter-terrorism legislation. He has campaigned for prison reform, a liberal approach to immigration, and defended the Human Rights Act against ongoing attacks from across the political spectrum. In January 2007, Clegg launched the 'We Can Cut Crime!' campaign, "proposing real action at a national level and acting to cut crime where the Liberal Democrats are in power locally".

After the resignation of Campbell, Clegg was regarded by much of the media as front-runner in the leadership election. The BBC's Political Editor Nick Robinson stated the election would be a two-horse race between Clegg and Chris Huhne who had stood against Campbell in the 2006 election. On Friday 19 October 2007, Clegg launched his bid to become leader of the Liberal Democrats. Clegg and Huhne clashed in the campaign over Trident but were largely in agreement on many other issues. It was announced on 18 December that he had won. Clegg was appointed to the Privy Council on 30 January 2008 and affirmed his membership on 12 March 2008.

In his acceptance speech upon winning the leadership contest, Clegg declared himself to be "a liberal by temperament, by instinct and by upbringing" and that he believes "Britain is a place of tolerance and pluralism". He has stated that he feels "a profound antagonism for prejudice of all sorts". He declared his priorities as: defending civil liberties; devolving the running of public services to parents, pupils and patients; and protecting the environment.