Nick Clegg

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.

He wrote a controversial pamphlet for the Centre for European Reform advocating devolution and evolution of the European Union, and contributed to the 2004 Orange Book, where he offered market liberal solutions for reform of European institutions.[2] He co-authored a pamphlet with Duncan Brack arguing for a wholesale reform of world trade rules to allow room for a greater emphasis on development, internationally binding environmental treaties, and parliamentary democracy within the WTO system.

Following 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",[62] 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".[63]

Clegg caused a degree of controversy when, at the Liberal Democrat party conference in 2007, he admitted his leadership ambitions to journalists at a fringe event.[64] The admission followed a period of increased media speculation about Sir Menzies Campbell's leadership, which the admission by Clegg did nothing to reduce and resulted in a rebuke by some of his frontbench colleagues.[64] This followed a report from Kevin Maguire in the New Statesman that Clegg had failed to hide his disloyalty to Campbell's leadership.[65] Campbell eventually resigned on 15 October 2007, saying that questions about his leadership were "getting in the way of further progress by the party".[66]

Nick Clegg attends the Je Suis Charlie rally with his wife Miriam González Durántez in Trafalgar Square, January 2015

Clegg at Cardiff University

After Campbell's resignation, Clegg was regarded by much of the media as front-runner in the leadership election.[67][68][69] 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.[70] On Friday 19 October 2007, Clegg launched his bid to become leader of the Liberal Democrats.[71] 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.[72] Clegg was appointed to the Privy Council (PC) 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".[25] He declared his priorities as: defending civil liberties; devolving the running of public services to parents, pupils and patients; and protecting the environment.[73]

In an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live on the morning after his election to the leadership, Clegg stated that he does not believe in God, but that he has "an immense amount of respect for people of faith".[74][75][76] In 2010, Clegg elaborated on this question, stating: "I was asked a question once in one of those questions where you're only allowed to answer 'yes' or 'no', and I was asked 'Do you believe in God?' As it happens I don't know whether God exists. I'm much more of an agnostic."[76]

He resigned as the leader of the Liberal Democrats after the 2015 general election. He said the results were "immeasurably more crushing and unkind than he feared".[77] He was succeeded by Tim Farron after a leadership election.

In March 2008, GQ magazine ran with an interview conducted by Piers Morgan in which Clegg admitted to sleeping with "no more than 30" women.[78] Senior Lib Dem MPs defended his comments; Lembit Öpik said it showed "you can be a human being and a party Leader", and Norman Lamb that "Nick tries to be absolutely straight in everything that he does, and that might sometimes get him into trouble but he will build a reputation for being honest and straightforward."[79] Speaking to the BBC about the interview Clegg said "wisdom with hindsight is an easy thing" as what had been a split second response had been "taken out of context, interpreted, over interpreted and so on".[80]

Upon his election Clegg appointed leadership rival Huhne as his replacement as Home Affairs spokesperson and following his strong performances as acting party leader, Vince Cable was retained as the main Treasury spokesperson. Media commentators noted that the Clegg-Huhne-Cable triumvirate provided the Liberal Democrats with an effective political team for the coming years.[81] On 5 March 2008, Clegg suffered a real test following the resignation of three of his front bench team. David Heath, Alistair Carmichael and Tim Farron had been told to abstain in the vote for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty but had wanted to vote in favour and so defied the whip. In addition to the three frontbenchers, a further 12 more backbench LibDem MPs also defied the whip and voted "yes". Clegg said "though we have disagreed on this issue I fully understand and respect their strongly held views on the subject.... However, as they have recognised, the shadow cabinet cannot operate effectively unless the principle of collective responsibility is maintained."[82]

The resignations happened not long after Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons, had on 26 February 2008 blocked calls by the Liberal Democrats for an "in or out" referendum on Britain's EU membership. The Speaker's authority was called into question when, led by Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats marched out of the House of Commons, calling the Speaker's decision a constitutional "outrage". Just moments earlier, frontbench foreign affairs spokesman for the party Ed Davey had been expelled from the chamber by the Speaker's deputy, Sir Michael Lord, for further challenging the ruling.[83]

In November 2008, Clegg suffered more allegations of difficulties with the front bench following an article in the Daily Mirror that reported that Clegg had criticised senior members of his front bench whilst on a plane journey. He told the BBC's Politics Show that "a lot of it is, frankly, fiction".[84]

In the Commons, Clegg initially concentrated most of his fire on Labour and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, but in the autumn of 2009 began also focusing on Cameron and the Conservatives.[86] Clegg rejected an appeal from Cameron for their two parties to work together.[87] Clegg argued that the Conservatives were totally different from his party, and that the Lib Dems were the true "progressives" in UK politics.[87] At the 2009 party conference in Bournemouth, he accused the Conservatives of "simply believing it is their turn" and claimed that come the election the "choice before people is the choice between fake, phoney change from David Cameron's Conservatives, and real change the Liberal Democrats offer".

Clegg with David Cameron, and Chris Huhne in 2009

Clegg became the first party leader in modern political history to call for a Speaker of the House of Commons to resign, describing then-Speaker Michael Martin, following his handling of the expenses scandal, as a defender of the status quo and an obstacle to the reform of Parliament.[33][88]

In response to revelations about MPs' expenses, Clegg set out his plans for reform of Parliament in The Guardian.[89] Speaking about the plans, he said: "let us bar the gates of Westminster and stop MPs leaving for their summer holidays until this crisis has been sorted out, and every nook and cranny of our political system has been reformed." He argued for the "reinvention of British politics" within 100 days, calling for a commitment to accept the Kelly expenses report in full; the power to recall members suspended for misconduct; House of Lords reform; reform of party funding; fixed-term parliaments; enabling legislation for a referendum on AV+; and changes to House of Commons procedure to reduce executive power.[6]

Shortly ahead of the election, Clegg was asked about his own expenses by Andrew Neil of the BBC. Clegg allegedly claimed the full amount permissible under the Additional Cost Allowance, including claims for food, gardening and redecorating his second home. The Telegraph also said Clegg claimed £80 for international call charges, a claim he said he would repay.[90]

Clegg aimed to modernise the Liberal Democrat Party at the same time as maintaining its traditions of political and philosophical liberalism. In 2011, he told a party conference that the Liberal Democrats were radical centrist in orientation: "Our opponents try to divide us with their outdated labels of left and right. But we are not on the left and we are not on the right. We have our own label: Liberal. We are liberals and we own the freehold to the centre ground of British politics. Our politics is the politics of the radical centre."[91]

When he became leader of the Liberal Democrats, Clegg called for more choice for patients on waiting lists in the National Health Service (NHS), giving them the option to go private and to be funded by the NHS if they wish; a substantial tax cut to "put more money back into the pockets of people", better action on the environment, the abandonment of Britain's Trident missile-defence system, fixed-term parliaments; devolving more power to local councils; giving constituents the power to force a by-election if their MP was found responsible for serious wrongdoing; and a slimming of government across the board.[92] Clegg campaigned to cut spending on defence projects such as Eurofighter as well as the UK Trident programme.[93] As regards public spending, at the party's 2009 conference in Bournemouth Clegg argued for "savage" spending cuts and said politicians need to treat voters "like grown ups" whilst accusing the Labour and Conservative parties of indulging in "childish games" over the "c-word".[94]

Nick Clegg being presented with a Gurkha hat by a Gurkha veteran during his Maidstone visit to celebrate the success of their joint campaign for the right to live in Britain, 2009

On 29 April 2009 the Liberal Democrats proposed in the House of Commons to offer all Gurkhas an equal right of residence; the motion resulted in a defeat for the Government by 267 votes to 246. It was the only first day motion defeat for a government since 1978. On speaking about the result Clegg said "this is an immense victory [...] for the rights of Gurkhas who have been waiting so long for justice, a victory for Parliament, a victory for decency". He added that it was "the kind of thing people want this country to do".[95]

On 21 May 2009, the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced that all Gurkha veterans who retired before 1997 with at least four years' service could settle in the UK. The actress and daughter of Gurkha corps Major James Lumley, Joanna Lumley, who had highlighted the treatment of the Gurkhas and campaigned for their rights, commented: "This is the welcome we have always longed to give".[96]

After Clegg became leader, the polls were mixed; the Liberal Democrats occasionally polled above 20 points,[119] averaging around 19%.[120] In May 2009, the party overtook Labour in an opinion poll (25%–22%) for the first time since the days of its predecessor, the SDP–Liberal Alliance, in 1987.[121] Clegg thus became the first Liberal Democrat leader to out-poll Labour in an opinion poll. After Clegg's performance in the first of three general election debates on 15 April 2010, there was an unprecedented surge of media attention and support for the Liberal Democrats in opinion polls. ComRes reported the Liberal Democrats at 24% on the day,[122] and on 20 April in a YouGov poll, the Liberal Democrats were on 34%, one point above the Conservatives, with Labour in third place on 28%.[123] This success was described as "Cleggmania" by journalists.[124]

Following the formation of the coalition, support for the Liberal Democrats fell.[8] On 8 December 2010, the eve of a House of Commons vote on changes in the funding of higher education, an opinion poll conducted by YouGov recorded voting intention figures of Conservatives 41%, Labour 41%, other parties 11% and Liberal Democrats 8%,[125] the lowest level of support recorded for the Liberal Democrats in any opinion poll since September 1990.[126]

Five parliamentary by-elections were held during Clegg's leadership prior to the 2010 general election. At Crewe and Nantwich the party's share of the vote decreased by 4%. In the subsequent Henley by-election the party achieved a 1.8% increase in their vote. At the Norwich North by-election the party came third with a 2.2% fall in their vote share. The two Scottish by-elections, Glenrothes and Glasgow East, saw decreases in the Liberal Democrat vote, 8% and 10% respectively.

The local election results for the Liberal Democrats during the same period were mixed. In the 2008 local elections the Liberal Democrats took second place with 25% of the vote making a net gain of 34 councillors and took control of Sheffield City Council,[127] but their share of the vote was down 1%. The next year the Liberal Democrats gained Bristol but lost both Somerset and Devon producing a net loss of councils and a net loss of one councillor.[128] The party however did increase its share of the vote by 3% to 28% beating the Labour Party into third place. In the European Parliament elections held on the same day, the Liberal Democrats gained a seat but had a slight decrease in their share of the vote, staying in 4th place compared to the previous European elections, behind the two main parties and UKIP.[129]

In the 2008 London Assembly elections the Liberal Democrats were the only one of the three main parties to see a decrease in their share of the vote, and in the mayoral election the Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick came third again with a decreased share of the vote.

At the 2010 general election, the Liberal Democrats won 23% of the vote, an improvement of 1%, however they only won 57 seats, 5 fewer than in 2005. No political party had an overall majority, resulting in the nation's first hung parliament since February 1974.[130] Talks between Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, and Clegg led to an agreed Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition, enabling the Queen to invite Cameron to form a government.

Since the 2010 general election, Clegg's Liberal Democrats have contested 13 by-elections in Great Britain (as of 2 March 2013).[131] The party scored their first by-election win of Clegg's leadership at Eastleigh in 2013, with Mike Thornton holding the seat for the Liberal Democrats, despite a 19% swing away from the party. Clegg described the result as an election in which Liberal Democrats "overcame the odds with a stunning victory."[132]

Earlier by-elections in the parliament had proven less successful. They failed to win Oldham East and Saddleworth[133] in January 2011, after they had successfully petitioned to overturn the general election result. They polled 32% of the vote, a small increase on 2010, but lost out to Labour whose vote was up by 10 percentage points. The Liberal Democrats also came second at Leicester South (which they had held between 2004 and 2005) in May 2011 with 23% (down 4% on 2010),[134] and at Manchester Central in November 2012 where they polled 9% (down 17%).[135]

In the remaining nine contests, Liberal Democrats have finished no higher than third place (and in Rotherham finished in an unprecedented 8th position, with just 451 votes, or 2% of the total).[136] In every by-election except Oldham East and Saddleworth their vote has fallen, with decreases of over 10% recorded at eight of the contests. In six of the 13 by-elections, the party have lost their deposit after failing to poll 5% of the vote – an unusually high number of such lost deposits for a major party.

A year following the formation of the Coalition Clegg's Liberal Democrats faced poor results in the local elections. In Scotland the party lost all its mainland constituency seats, holding only the Shetland and Orkney islands. Their constituency vote share also fell from 16% to just 8%[137] In the Welsh elections the party held just one of its 3 constituency seats, that of Welsh leader Kirsty Williams, but gained a regional seat.[138] In the 2011 local elections, the Lib Dems lost over 700 councillors, and slumped from 25% to 17% in the share of the local council vote, also losing control of Sheffield City Council with the LibDems dropping to the lowest number of councillors in more than 20 years.[139]

In the AV referendum, the Yes vote, supported by the Liberal Democrats, was defeated by 67.9% to 32.1%. In the face of the election results, Clegg told the BBC that Liberal Democrats must "get up, dust ourselves down and move on".[140]

Local elections were held in May 2012 to 185 local authorities in Great Britain, including all 32 councils in Scotland and 21 out of 22 in Wales.

Results again proved poor for the Liberal Democrats, as they won 431 seats in total, a loss of over 300 on the pre-election position.[141] They also lost overall control of one council (Cambridge, though the Liberal Democrats hold 21 out of 42 seats, so they exercise control with the mayor's casting vote[142]). They retained control of the other six councils they were defending in England. Despite the losses, the Liberal Democrat vote share saw a modest increase compared to 2011.

Elections were also held for the Mayoralties of Salford and Liverpool. Liberal Democrat candidates polled 5% and 6% respectively, with Labour winning both contests.[143]

In London, elections were held to the London Assembly and Mayoralty. The Liberal Democrats again selected Brian Paddick as their Mayoral candidate. He polled just 4% of the vote (down from 10% in 2008), and finished fourth behind the Green Party.[144] In the Assembly, the Liberal Democrats also finished behind the Greens across London, and failed to win any of the individual constituency seats. They polled 7% of the vote on the London-wide list (which elects "top-up" candidates to the assembly under a form of proportional representation), which represented a decline of 5% on the previous contest. This meant that the party lost one seat, and was reduced to just two assembly seats, their smallest representation since the formation of the assembly in 2000.[145]

In the aftermath of the results, Clegg again faced calls to quit as leader,[146] with former MP Lembit Öpik suggesting that Clegg retain his Cabinet position while relinquishing leadership of the party, saying "My empirical view is that we would have done better with a different leader".

As part of the Coalition Agreement, directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners were introduced to replace Police Authorities.[147] Elections[148] to the new posts took place in November 2012. Liberal Democrats contested 24 of the 41 police force areas, and failed to win any of the contests (and in fact never progressed to the second round of the two-stage count in any of the elections they fought). Their best performance was in Cumbria, where they polled 22%, while their worst was Surrey where the took just 6% of the vote.

Despite not winning any contests under their official party label, one Liberal Democrat, Winston Roddick was elected as Police and Crime Commissioner for North Wales having stood as an Independent.[149] Roddick claimed that he had never hidden his party membership and that his campaign was "financed by himself with no donations or backing from any political party and he was an independent candidate in every sense of the word". His campaign also dismissed as "sour grapes" claims from the Labour Party that "the only way in which the Lib Dems thought they could win the election was by presenting themselves as independent."

In the 2015 general election, the Liberal Democrats were reduced from 57 seats to 8. Clegg held his Sheffield Hallam seat with a reduced majority. After his party's result, he resigned the party leadership the day after the election.[150][151]

In the 2017 general election, Clegg lost to Labour candidate Jared O'Mara by a margin of 2,125 votes (4.2%).[11]

In October 2017, Clegg wrote How to Stop Brexit (And Make Britain Great Again), which made the case that Brexit was not inevitable.

In May 2018, he joined David Miliband and Nicky Morgan calling for a soft Brexit.[152] The next month he appeared at a People's Vote march in London to mark the second anniversary of the EU referendum of 2016. People's Vote was a campaign group calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between Britain and the EU.[153]

In July 2019, Clegg said that "aggressive and regressive English nationalism" had taken over the Conservative Party in their competition with Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party established in November 2018. When asked how he expected the next few years to unfold, Clegg told the New Statesman that "the clock is now ticking for the end of the union of the United Kingdom".[154]

From January 2013 until 2015, Clegg presented a weekly radio show on LBC called Call Clegg.[155][156] Initially broadcast in the London area, the programme went national along with LBC in February 2014.[157] The programme was nominated for two Radio Academy Awards in 2014.[158]

Between April and October 2018, Clegg fronted a podcast called Anger Management with Nick Clegg,[159] in which he interviewed known persons about the politics of anger. Since the first episode, it has been featured in The Guardian under Podcast of the Week.[160]

A party political broadcast in which Clegg apologised for the Liberal Democrats breaking the promise over tuition fees was remixed into a song, "Nick Clegg Says I'm Sorry" by The Poke and Alex Ross, and sold on iTunes as a charity single. The song charted on 23 September 2012 at number 143 in the Official UK Singles Charts before climbing to 104 the following week.[161] In his 2010 production Dandelion Mind, comedian Bill Bailey sang "Nick Clegg you don't have to wear that dress tonight, walk the streets for money, you don't have to sell your body to the right" to the tune of "Roxanne".[162]

In June 2018, vice-president of global affairs and communications at Facebook, Inc. Elliot Schrage announced he would be resigning his position.[163] After talks with the Facebook leadership and Richard Allan, Baron Allan of Hallam, Facebook's Director of Policy in Europe and the Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam before Clegg, in October 2018 it was announced that Clegg had been hired as a lobbyist and public relations officer, replacing Schrage as Vice-President, Global Affairs and Communications.[164][165][166] He joined Facebook because he was "convinced that the culture is changing" and that "lawmakers need to have a serious conversation about whether data-intensive companies allow other companies to share and use data". He admitted that the Cambridge Analytica data scandal had "rocked Facebook to its very foundations" and told the BBC that the company "hadn't done enough in the past" in regards to data privacy.[167]

In April 2019, Clegg was accused by Věra Jourová, European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, in a letter signed by a number of senior EU civil servants, of misunderstanding EU law, stating that proposed new Facebook guidelines on political advertising would "hinder the exercise of EU electoral rights."[168] In May 2019, he rejected calls by American presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, as well as Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes to break Facebook up, saying that Facebook was "a great American success story" and that "I don't think it's a very American tradition to start penalizing success."[169] In June 2019, Clegg said there was "absolutely no evidence" that Russia had influenced the outcome of the EU referendum using Facebook. He said that the company was working towards greater regulation of technology firms.[170] In October 2019, Damian Collins, chair of the British House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, formally asked Clegg to explain why Facebook had exempted political statements from fact-checking guidelines.[171]

In 2020, Clegg helped lead the creation of the Facebook Oversight Board, which reported to him, convincing former Danish Prime Minister and former College of Europe friend Helle Thorning-Schmidt to serve as its co-chair.[172] He then played a role in Facebook's deplatforming of U.S. President Donald Trump in mid-2021.[173]

Ahead of the release of the whistleblown Facebook Files in October 2021, Clegg authored an internal memo saying that there was no evidence Facebook was a main cause in polarisation and that the company does not "profit from polarization, in fact, just the opposite."[174] He later posted a public statement saying that the reporting on the Files "conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook's leadership and employees," saying that it was "just plain false" that Facebook ignored its own internal research.[175] After the release of the Files, he then made a number of public interviews defending the company. In one of the interviews, he stated that "I can't give you a yes or no answer" when asked if Facebook played a role in amplifying extremist content ahead of the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[176] Clegg faced criticism for his role in defending the company, with theGuardian journalist John Harris dubbing him "the fall guy for Facebook's failures".[163][177][178][179][180] In February 2022, Clegg was promoted to president of global affairs.[181]

• Clegg, Nick (2000). Doing Less to Do More: A New Focus for the EU. Centre for European Reform. ISBN 978-1-901229-17-2. Extract Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
• Brack, Duncan and Clegg, Nick (2001). Trading for the Future: Reforming the WTO. Centre for Reform. ISBN 978-1-902622-27-9.
• Clegg, Nick (2002). "Restoring Legitimacy: Parliaments and the EU" in Ulrike Rüb (ed.) European governance: views from the UK on democracy, participation and policy-making in the EU, pp31–44. The Federal Trust for Education and Research. ISBN 978-1-903403-33-4.
• Grayson, Richard and Clegg, Nick (2002). Learning from Europe: lessons in education.
• Clegg, Nick (2009). The Liberal Moment Archived 23 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine. Demos. ISBN 978-1-906693-24-4.
• Alexander, Danny with foreword by Clegg Nick (2010), Why Vote Liberal Democrat?. Biteback. ISBN 978-1-84954-021-6.
• Clegg, Nick (ed.) (2010). Change That Works for You: Liberal Democrat General Election Manifesto 2010: Building a Fairer Britain. Liberal Democrat Publications. ISBN 978-1-907046-19-3.
• Clegg, Nick (2016). Politics: Between the Extremes. The Bodley Head. ISBN 9781847924056
• Clegg, Nick (2017). How To Stop Brexit (And Make Britain Great Again). The Bodley Head. ISBN 978-1847925237.

• (2011) Nick Clegg: The Biography by Chris Bowers
• (2011) The Clegg Coup: Britain's First Coalition Government Since Lloyd George by Jasper Gerard
• (2011) The Cameron-Clegg Government: Coalition Politics in an Age of Austerity by Simon Lee and Matt Beech
• (2011) Dave and Nick: The Year of the Honeymoon by Ann Treneman