Nick Clegg: The Biography
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It is hard to imagine now but prior to the 2010 general election Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg was ridiculed for being unknown.
In 2008, a BBC Radio 5 programme showed members of the public a photograph of Clegg and asked them to identify him. No-one could.
There was also his humiliation at Prime Minister’s Questions when he was regularly drowned out by noise.
In Nick Clegg: The Biography, author Chris Bowers says there was concern that his party colleague Vince Cable was more recognisable than Clegg. To counteract this, it was decided that Cable should accompany him everywhere on the campaign trail.
The author portrays an interesting figure with a privileged background at Westminster School and Cambridge, who is comfortably multilingual. One scene describes Clegg speaking Dutch on the phone to his mother followed by a conversation in English and then an exchange in Spanish with his wife.
Clegg’s working career has been almost entirely in the political sphere, working for lobbyists and the European Commission in the early 1990s. He was an MEP from 1999 to 2004 before becoming MP for Sheffield in 2005 and ascending to party leader in the autumn of 2007.
Such a distinguished political background made him well known in Westminster circles but he still found it hard to break his political anonymity.
All that changed on April 15 2010, the night of the first television prime ministerial debate between the three main party leaders. Rather than a non-entity, Clegg appeared a breath of fresh air with a charismatic performance that shook the political landscape.
Bowers says the Lib Dems had long seen the TV debates as a golden opportunity and began planning as early as 2009. Cleggmania was born and the spotlight was thrust upon him in a way he had never before known.
Unsurprisingly, his new-found popularity is said to have put a spring in Clegg’s step but Bowers says he kept his feet firmly on the ground. Amid the euphoria, however, there was a note of caution from former party leader Paddy Ashdown, who warned that Clegg was a marked man.
Initially Clegg was declared more popular than Winston Churchill in a newspaper poll but a week later attitudes had changed. Bowers describes how the Conservatives went into a panic and there is suspicion that someone from Tory HQ began briefing negative stories to the press.
It resulted in front-page splashes in the Conservative papers on the day of the second debate, accusing Clegg of a Nazi slur on Britain and siphoning off public money into his private accounts.
The backlash had begun - Clegg performed slightly worse in the next two debates and the Lib Dem campaign ran out of momentum.
Election night was a disappointment for the Lib Dems but a hung parliament gave Clegg his chance to form a coalition with the Tories.
The machinations of forming the coalition are described in detail, forcing Clegg into the political spotlight when he was made deputy Prime Minister.
These days, Cleggmania is a distant memory. The Lib Dem leader has been reviled for trebling student tuition fees. Lib Dem polling has dropped as low as 7% and Clegg’s ratings are in the doldrums. But one thing is certain - everyone recognises him now.
By Samuel Dale
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