Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg
File:Nick Clegg MP.jpg
Lib Dem Home Affairs Spokesman
In office 2 March 2006 – present
Leader	Menzies Campbell
Preceded by	Mark Oaten
Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam
In office 5 May 2005 – present
Preceded by	Richard Allan
Majority	8,682 (21.4%)
Personal details
Born	(1967-01-07) January 7, 1967 Buckinghamshire, UK
Political party	Liberal Democrats
Spouse	Miriam Gonzalez Durantez
Alma mater	Robinson College, Cambridge

Nicholas William Peter Clegg (born 7 January 1967) is the British Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam and Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman. He is currently a candidate for the leadership of his party.

Early life

Nick Clegg was born in Buckinghamshire in 1967, the third of four children.

His half Russian father, Nicholas, was a banker, and is chairman of The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. His Dutch mother Hermance van den Wall Bake was a part time teacher of children with special educational needs. He was brought up bilingually in Dutch and English and also speaks French, German and Spanish..

His great-great-grandfather, the Russian nobleman Ignaty Zakrevsky, was Attorney General of Senate in Imperial Russia. Zakrevsky`s daughter, Alexandra Moullen was Nick great grandmother, and her daughter Baroness Kira von Engelhardt was a grandmother of Nick.Writer and suspected spy Baroness Moura Budberg-Bönningshausen (born Zakrevskaya) was a great-great aunt of Nick. She was a mistress of R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Maxim Gorky and H.G. Wells.

Education

Clegg was educated at Caldicott and Westminster Schools in London. As a 16-year-old exchange student in Munich, he was given community service for a minor case of arson: he and a friend burned some cacti belonging to a professor, something which he said he was "not proud" of, when it re-emerged during his time as Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman.

He attended Robinson College, Cambridge, after spending a gap year as a ski instructor in Austria and as an office junior in a Helsinki bank. At Cambridge, Clegg studied Archaeology and Anthropology. He was active in the student theatre, captain of the college tennis team, and campaigned for Survival International, protecting the rights of threatened indigenous peoples.

After university he was awarded a scholarship to study at the University of Minnesota for a year, where he wrote a thesis on the political philosophy of the Deep Green movement. He then moved to New York, where he worked as an intern under Christopher Hitchens at The Nation, a left wing magazine.

Clegg next moved to Brussels, where he worked for six months as a trainee in the G24 Co-ordination Unit, which delivered aid to the countries of the former Soviet Union. After the internship he took a second Masters degree at the College of Europe in Bruges, where he met his wife Miriam Gonzalez Durantez. They have since had two sons. Miriam Gonzalez Durantez politician father, senator of Spain Jose Antonio Gonzalez Caviedes, died in a car crash in 1996 , four years before she married.

Career before politics

In 1993, Nick Clegg won the Financial Times David Thomas Prize, set up in memory of David Thomas, a FT journalist killed on assignment in Kuwait in 1991. He was the first recipient and was sent to Hungary, where he wrote articles about the mass privatisation of industries in the former communist bloc.

In April 1994 he took up a post at the European Commission, working in the TACIS aid programme to the former Soviet Union. For two years he was responsible for developing direct aid programmes, worth €50 million, in central Asia and the Caucasus. He was involved in negotiations with Russia on airline overflight rights, and launched a conference in Tashkent in 1993 that founded TRACECA – the Transport Corridor for Europe, the Caucasus and Asia, or The New Silk Road.

Vice President and Trade Commissioner Leon Brittan then offered Clegg a job in his private office, as a European Union policy adviser and speechwriter. As part of this role, Clegg was in charge of the EC negotiating team on Chinese and Russian accession talks to the World Trade Organisation.

Member of the European Parliament

Nick Clegg was selected as the lead Liberal Democrat Euro-candidate for the East Midlands in 1998, and was first tipped as a politician to watch by Paddy Ashdown in 1999 in the Nottingham Evening Post.

On his election in 1999, he was the first Liberal parliamentarian elected in the East Midlands since Ernest Pickering was elected MP for Leicester West in 1931, and was credited with helping to significantly boost the Liberal Democrat poll rating in the region in the six months after his election. Clegg worked extensively during his time as a MEP to support the party in the region, not least in Chesterfield where Paul Holmes was elected as a MP in 2001.

In Europe, Clegg co-founded the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform, which led calls for reforms to expenses, transparency and accountability in the European Parliament.

He was made Trade and Industry spokesman for the European Liberal Democrat and Reform group (ELDR), and led on legislation for "local loop unbundling", opening up telephone networks across Europe to competition. It was the fastest piece of legislation ever to go through the parliament, and the subject of an in depth BBC Open University documentary on EU decision making.

Clegg campaigned extensively against illegal logging, and wrote a report which advocated that World Trade Organization (WTO) rules should be waived to allow an embargo on illegally logged timber. Clegg worked with fellow MEP Chris Davies on legislation to ban cosmetics tested on animals, pushing the law through despite arguments from the government that it was impossible under WTO rules. He also worked extensively with Green MEPs on legislation to liberalise the EU's energy sector, arguing that liberalisation was a crucial tool to promote greater green energy-efficiency and sustainability. Clegg took a leading role in providing Parliamentary oversight in the ongoing WTO world trade talks, acting as a founder member of the WTO Parliamentary Assembly and attending a number of WTO summits.

Clegg played an active role in persuading Conservative MEP Bill Newton Dunn to defect to the Liberal Democrats. Bill Newton Dunn subsequently succeeded him as MEP for the East Midlands.

Clegg decided to leave Brussels in 2002, arguing that the battle to persuade the public of the benefits of Europe was being fought at home, not in Brussels. He explained his reasons for standing down in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,848483,00.html

Nick Clegg's work in the East Midlands included campaigning together with the neighbouring MP Richard Allan, in the Sheffield Hallam constituency.

When in November 2004, Allan announced his intention to stand down from parliament, Clegg was selected as the new candidate for Sheffield Hallam. He then took up a part time teaching position in the politics department of Sheffield University, combining it with ongoing EU consultancy work which he took up after his departure from the European Parliament. He also gave a series of seminar lectures in the International Relations Department of Cambridge University.

Member of Parliament

Clegg worked closely with Allan throughout the campaign - including starring in a local pantomime - and won the seat in the 2005 general election with over 50% of the vote, and a majority of 8,682. This result represents one of the smallest swings away from the party in any seat in which an existing MP has been succeeded by a newcomer.

On his election, Clegg was elevated by leader Charles Kennedy to be the party's Spokesperson on Europe, focusing on the party's preparations for an expected referendum on the European constitution and acting as deputy to Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Ming Campbell.

Clegg's ability to articulate Liberal values at a very practical level have quickly lent him prominence, with many already seeing him as a future Liberal Democrat leader. Following the resignation of party leader Charles Kennedy on 7 January 2006, Clegg was touted as a possible leadership contender. He was quick to rule himself out and to declare his support for Sir Menzies Campbell, who won the ballot.

Lib Dems Home Affairs

After the 2006 leadership election, Clegg was promoted to be the main Home Affairs spokesperson, replacing Mark Oaten. In this job he has spearheaded the Liberal Democrats' defence of civil liberties, proposing a Freedom Bill to repeal unnecessary and illiberal legislation ([1]), 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, co-ordinating the anti-crime efforts of local activists in the Party.

In Sheffield, Clegg has campaigned on local transport, recycling, housing development, and health. He has close links with both of the city's universities and has opposed the closure of local services including fire stations and post offices. He is also Treasurer and Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Group on National Parks, a particular interest given that his constituency includes parts of the Peak District National Park.

Publications and policy

Nick Clegg has written extensively, publishing and contributing to a large number of pamphlets and books. With Professor 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 made similar proposals for reform of European institutions. He also 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.

Clegg chaired a policy working group for the Liberal Democrats on the Third Age in 2004, which focused on the importance of ending the cliff-edge of retirement and providing greater opportunities for older people to remain active beyond retirement. The group developed initial proposals on transforming post offices to help them survive as community hubs, in particular for older people.

He served on Charles Kennedy's policy review, Meeting the Challenge, and the It's About Freedom working parties.

Clegg also wrote a fortnightly column for Guardian Unlimited for four years while serving as a MEP.

Future Prospects

Since his election, Nick Clegg has been consistently mentioned as a potential candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats. Although he did not stand for the Liberal Democrats leadership election, 2006, he admitted on 18 September 2007 that he "probably would" stand for the leadership upon the eventual retirement of Sir Menzies Campbell, an event which took place on the 15th October 2007. Clegg's comments were seen by media commentators as a swipe against Campbell's leadership, and he was rebuked by other senior Liberal Democrats including potential leadership rival Chris Huhne. BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson has stated (BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, 16 October 2007) that the election will be a two-horse race between Clegg and Chris Huhne.

At the resignation of Campbell, Clegg was regarded by much of the media as front-runner in the election campaign for leader of the Liberal Democrats.

On Friday, 19 October 2007, Clegg launched his bid to become leader of the Liberal Democrats.

External links

• Nicholas Clegg MP official site
• Nick Clegg MP profile at the site of Liberal Democrats
• Sheffield Liberal Democrats
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Nick Clegg MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Nicholas Clegg MP
• Nick Clegg MP Open Rights Group
• The Public Whip - Nick Clegg voting record
• "I would stand for leader - Clegg", BBC News
• Liberal intent, Interview with The Observer