Nick Clegg

http://www.libdems.org.uk/about_nick

About Nick

I grew up in Buckinghamshire with my two brothers and sister. My mother is Dutch and my father is half Russian, which I’m sure helps explain my internationalist outlook and why I was so drawn to languages – I ended up learning French, German, Spanish and Dutch.

I studied Social Anthropology at Cambridge and afterwards continued my postgraduate studies at the University of Minnesota and the College of Europe in Bruges – where I met my wife, Miriam, with whom I now have three sons. I then spent some time in New York, working as a trainee journalist with Christopher Hitchens, as a consultant in London, and in Budapest writing about economic reform having won a prize from the Financial Times. Later I moved to Brussels where I worked for five years for the European Commission. My job included managing aid projects in Central Asia following the collapse of communism and acting as a trade negotiator with China and Russia as a senior member of Leon Brittan’s office, then Vice President of the EC.

In 1999 I was elected Member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands - the first liberal Parliamentarian in the whole region since the 1930s. As an MEP, I co-founded the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform, which led calls for reforms to expenses, transparency and accountability in the European Parliament. I was also the Trade and Industry Spokesman for the Liberal group of MEPs and piloted a radical new law breaking up telecoms monopolies.

In the end the travelling life of an MEP became too difficult with a young family and in 2004 I stood down as an MEP. I lectured part-time at Sheffield and Cambridge Universities before being elected as Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam in 2005.

I became Europe spokesman in Charles Kennedy’s shadow cabinet, acting as deputy to Menzies (Ming) Campbell. When Ming won the 2006 leadership election, I became Shadow Home Secretary. In this position, I led the Liberal Democrats’ defence of civil liberties, proposing a Freedom Bill to repeal unnecessary and illiberal legislation, campaigned against ID Cards and the retention of innocent people’s DNA, and argued against excessive counter-terrorism legislation.

I was elected leader in December 2007 after a leadership campaign in which I focused on reaching out beyond the party to new voters. In 2010, following the election, I had the privilege of taking the party into government as part of the first Coalition in the UK since the Second World War, where we have been able to put Liberal Democrat policies into practice for the first time – from our income tax cut, our £2.5b pupil premium, legislating for gay marriage, introducing shared parental leave, the list goes on and on.

Most importantly, we’ve proved that we can be trusted with Britain’s economy , and I want to see the Liberal Democrats back in government again next time round so that we can finish the job we’ve started. The Coalition’s economic strategy is working but there is still a long way to go. I believe that we are now the only party that will finish the job and – crucially – finish it fairly. It’s not enough to build a stronger economy, Britain needs a fairer society too – and that’s what you’ll get from us.