PROFILE:Despite good polls, will the Lib Dem leader's internationalism be used against him?
BEFORE NICK Clegg's performance in last week's leaders' debate triggered what the British tabloids have dubbed "Cleggmania", the leader of the Liberal Democrats was probably best known for a famously indiscreet interview he gave GQmagazine two years ago.
Pressed for details of his sexual history by Piers Morgan, Clegg disclosed that he had slept with “no more than 30” women. The ill-judged admission, which earned him the monicker “Cleggover”, was almost the extent of Clegg’s public profile until his triumph in last Thursday’s televised debate made voters sit up and ask: who is Nick Clegg?
Born in 1967, the Lib Dem leader grew up in Oxfordshire with two brothers and a sister in a large extended family. His mother is Dutch and his father is half Russian. Clegg was brought up speaking Dutch and English and is also fluent in French, German and Spanish. “I guess helps explain my internationalist outlook, and why I learned a number of European languages,” he says in an online profile.
One of the more colourful members of Clegg’s family tree is his great-great aunt Moura Budberg, a Russian aristocrat who has been described as something of a Mata Hari. Her lovers reputedly included writers HG Wells and Maxim Gorky.
Clegg's family background has led the Daily Mailto sniff that he was "by blood the least British leader of a British political party".
After attending London’s exclusive Westminster School – where he became friends with TV presenter Louis Theroux and his brother Marcel – Clegg studied anthropology at Cambridge. He has sidestepped claims that records show he joined the Young Conservatives at university.
After graduation, he set out on a road trip across the US with the Theroux brothers before interning as an assistant for Christopher Hitchens at the New York offices of The Nation, a left-wing magazine.
In the mid-1990s, he moved to Brussels where he spent five years at the European Commission. He worked as an aide to Margaret Thatcher’s former home secretary Leon Brittan, who was commission vice-president at the time.
In 1999, Clegg was elected to the European Parliament. As an MEP, he co-founded the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform and piloted new laws aimed at breaking up telecoms monopolies.
Pat Cox, then president of the liberal ELDR group in the parliament, remembers Clegg as “an informed and lively contributor” who, with his linguistic skills, was “very much the complete European”. Cox, whose former press secretary Alison Suttie is now Clegg’s chief of staff, also recalls his “adroit work” on the telecommunications legislation.
“He showed mastery of the brief and the complexity of the politics around it. He also demonstrated a keen sense of social justice.”
In 2004 Clegg stood down as an MEP due to pressures in balancing career and family life. He became the MP for Sheffield Hallam in 2005. Just two years later Clegg replaced Sir Menzies Campbell as leader of the Liberal Democrats, narrowly beating rival Chris Huhne who now serves as the party’s home affairs spokesman.
Clegg met his wife, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, a high-powered Spanish lawyer, while studying at the College of Europe in Bruges. They were married in 2000 in Spain and have three sons – Antonio, Alberto and Miguel. The couple’s friends include film director Sam Mendes.
In contrast with the other leaders’ wives, Gonzalez Durantez has taken a low-profile approach to her husband’s campaign. Work and family commitments, she has explained, preclude her from playing a greater role.
Some British media outlets have seized on the fact that Gonzalez Durantez has not taken up British citizenship and consequently cannot vote for her husband.
Others have made much of an interview Clegg gave the BBC the day after he became leader of the Liberal Democrats, in which he said he did not believe in God.
Middle England might be all agog at the election frisson caused by the youthful-looking and modish Liberal Democrat leader but some wonder if his internationalism may be used against him, not least by the likes of the Daily Mail.
Asked by the Guardianyesterday if those who imply he might put British citizens last might have a point, Cleggs answer was firm. "They are completely misjudging modern Britain," he said.