Unpredictable liberal

The British Europhile trying to salvage the Liberal Democrat brand.

Nick Clegg has always been ready to start over and try something new: he has been a ski instructor, a fact-checker for the polemicist Christopher Hitchens, a Financial Times reporter in Hungary, an aide to a vice-president of the European Commission, and a member of the European Parliament. Nearly two years after becoming Britain’s deputy prime minister, he is again in search of a change of course.

The 45-year-old Clegg is a polyglot – he is fluent in Dutch, French, German and Spanish – and globetrotting is a family trait: his aristocratic paternal grandmother fled Russia after the revolution; his mother’s family were Dutch administrators in Indonesia. He is so cosmopolitan that the Daily Mail ran the headline: “His wife is Spanish, his mother Dutch, his father half-Russian and his spin-doctor German. Is there ANYTHING British about Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg?”

There is, in truth, quite a lot about Clegg that is British: he has the scrubbed look of a privately schooled English boy; a sheepish embarrassment when things are not going his way; and an adventurous spirit, unsullied by self-doubt or angst, which has helped him to lead his party into peacetime government for the first time since the 1920s.

But with he and his party faring extremely poorly in opinion polls, he may need to gamble again if he is to avoid having to pack his bags and resume his travels.

The polls have not always been so poor. Indeed, for a brief moment during the 2010 election campaign, the leader of the Liberal Democrats was the most popular man in Britain. His appearance in the first-ever televised election debates was the first time that most British voters had noticed him, and sparked what was dubbed ‘Cleggmania’.

Articulate, presentable and conspicuously not Gordon Brown, the gruff Labour prime minister, or the Conservative leader David Cameron, he soared in the polls. The election result that followed was slightly disappointing. Although he achieved his party’s (or its predecessors’) highest vote since 1983, it lost five seats, the first time its representation had shrunk since 1992. But, crucially, it held the balance of power.

It was a position his party had not been in since 1974 (when the Liberal Party, as it then was, flinched from coalition with the Conservatives), and many saw it as a once-in-a-generation chance to transform the Liberal Democrats into a serious, and regular, party of government, rather than a ‘dustbin for protest votes’, as opponents had called it.

Clegg’s decision to enter a coalition with the Conservatives, whose central objective was to reduce the deficit, and subsequent policy U-turns – such as agreement to raise university tuition fees – has cost his party the support of many left-leaning voters. Nor has Clegg delivered the transformation of British politics that he is aiming for. Electoral reform has long been the main objective of Britain’s third party. Obtaining power seems to have made it no more likely; indeed, defeat in a May 2011 referendum on electoral reform has made it less likely that ‘hung parliaments’, where the Liberal Democrat support would be required to form a government, will recur.

Fact File

Curriculum Vitae

1967: Born, Chalfont St Giles

1989: Graduated in social anthropology, Cambridge University

1989-90: Studied political philosophy, University of Minnesota

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1991-92: Master’s in European affairs, College of Europe, Bruges

1992-93: Political consultant with GJW Government Relations

1993-94: Journalist with the Financial Times

1994-96: Trade negotiator and manager of Tacis aid projects, European Commission

1996-99: Aide to Leon Brittan, European commissioner for trade and external affairs

1999-2004: Liberal Democrat MEP for the East Midlands

2004: Partner at Brussels-based political consultancy GPlus Europe

2004-05: Part-time university lecturer

2005-: Member of the UK parliament

2007-: Leader of the Liberal Democrats

2010-: Deputy prime minister

As the coalition approaches its second birthday, Clegg is changing strategy. Initially, his approach was to appear indivisible from Cameron and the Conservatives, establishing credibility for his party as tough administrators prepared to take difficult decisions, especially on spending cuts. Now, he is attempting to re-establish a separate identity, to make it clear where the parties disagree and what the Liberal Democrats would like to do differently.

This has been most apparent on tax. Clegg and his allies have begun talking about raising the income-tax threshold more quickly. There is also disagreement on reform of the House of Lords, Britain’s appointed upper chamber: if its members were elected by proportional representation, the party’s influence might be entrenched.

But perhaps the most significant divergence is on Europe. Were it not for the Conservative Party’s Euroscepticism, it is possible that Clegg and some of his allies would have ended up as liberal Tories. If they had been in the same generation, it is hard to think why Clegg would have ended up in a different party from Kenneth Clarke, the 71-year-old pro-European Conservative justice minister.

Although Clegg initially voiced support for Cameron’s decision to deploy the UK’s veto at December’s European Council, he later backtracked, saying he was “bitterly disappointed”, and that “what I think we can do, must do and will do is make sure that this setback does not become a permanent breach”. It emerged that, although he was aware of the general negotiating tactics, he was not consulted before the veto was used. From now on, a member of his staff will accompany the prime minister to European summits.

Clegg’s position rarely takes him to Brussels. He would be eminently equipped: a graduate of the College of Europe in Bruges (where he met his wife, Miriam, a lawyer and daughter of a Spanish senator, with whom he has three sons), he went on to be an aide to Leon Brittan when he was trade commissioner, and to be a member of the European Parliament, where he – along with Cecilia Malmstrom, now the European commissioner for home affairs, and Helle Thorning-Schmidt, now Denmark’s prime minister – founded a campaign for reform. (Reform-mindedness did not prevent him becoming a partner, for six months, at the political consultancy GPlus after leaving the Parliament.) Some believe that his future may also lie in Brussels: if he is unable to turn around his party’s position, he may head there as the UK’s commis-sioner in 2014, enabling him, if not his party, to escape the verdict of the voters.

Increasingly, however, the Conservatives worry that it will become tempting for Clegg to find an issue over which to bring the coalition down and attempt to rehabilitate himself and his party.

From being the young and little-noticed leader of the third party, Clegg has been catapulted into the national consciousness – and not always to his benefit: student protestors burnt an effigy of him following the increase in university fees. He has contributed with his endearing habit of answering questions perhaps too fully: telling one interviewer that he had slept with “no more than 30” women; another that he cries regularly when listening to music; and a third of how he dressed in drag in New York.

But Clegg has soldiered resolutely on. His decision to enter government in 2010 gave him five years to change the rules of British politics – or his political career would be finished, and perhaps his political party along with it. He is following a high-risk course, but Clegg has never seemed afraid of new horizons or of taking unpredictable directions.