Nick Clegg
Nick Clegg
Nicholas William Peter Cleggis a British Liberal Democrat politician who was the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Lord President of the Council from 2010 to 2015 in the Cameron coalition ministry. Clegg was the Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2007 to 2015 and has been the Member of Parliamentfor Sheffield Hallam since 2005...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth7 January 1967
dream thinking people
I have got instincts that, I think, are very much in tune with people's very keen sense to see something different. I did not dream of being in politics since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I was not involved in student politics, or not in that partisan way.
long people judgemental
I don't lead a particularly Bohemian existence. The main criterion for me is not to be judgemental of other people so long as what they do is not harmful or offensive to others.
morning complaining may
I don't want to clip on the armour every morning. I've seen some politicians do this and they get a bit mangled and bitter. I just refuse to do that. I refuse to be angry or bitter or complain, and I remain open. I may sometimes be a bit too open but I'm not going to change that one bit.
dirty naughty hands
I don't even pretend we can occupy the Lib Dem holier-than-thou, hands-entirely-clean-and-entirely-empty-type stance. No, we are getting our hands dirty, and inevitably and totally understandably we are being accused of being just like any other politicians.
ambition keys leader
I didn't become leader to transform the Liberal Democrats into an enlarged form of the Electoral Reform Society. It's not the be all and end all for us. There are other very, very key ambitions in politics, not least social mobility and life chances, that I care about as passionately if not more.
party two political
One thing I have frankly decided is that when it comes to political reform we have two conservative parties in British politics. Both the Labour and Conservative parties have constantly and repeatedly failed to honour promises they have made about reforming, cleaning, modernising our clapped-out system.
distance people loathing
Actually, the curious thing is that the more you become a subject of admiration or loathing, the more you're examined under a microscope, the distance seems to open up between who you really are and the portrayals that people impose on you.
blue media political
You have a political and media elite who have an idiom by which they describe politics. It's highly, highly polarised. It's right, left, red, blue, up, down, victorious, crushed.
morning believe start-the-day
Do I get up every morning and ask: am I doing the things that I believe in and am I doing them for the best possible motives? Yes. Unambiguously yes.
government order doe
Any government, of whatever composition, needs to mobilise opinion way beyond its own ranks in order to do the difficult things that it does.
dad want strict
I am quite strict as a dad but I don't want to be censorious.
years work-out perspective
Although I am a young leader, I actually came to it strangely quite late. I have a different perspective, partly because of my family, partly because of what I did for ten years: negotiating trade deals, working out in Central Asia doing assistance projects.
party arrogance nasty
The Labour Party has become consumed by collective bile towards... the Liberal Democrats. That portrays a rather nasty arrogance.
hands europe issues
I work in lockstep, hand in glove, with the prime minister on these issues, and as we are supportive to the Eurozone so they can sort their problems out, in return they introduce safeguards to ensure precisely what I said: that the single market is not fragmented and that important industries like the financial services industry are treated fairly. Not exceptional treatment, but are just simply treated fairly, on a level playing field within Europe.