Nick Clegg: forget it - love bombs bounce off me

Written by Isabel Oakeshott and published in Sunday Times on Sun 10th Jan 2010

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg and his wife Miriam Gonzalez Durantez photographed in their home in Putney, southwest London.

Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the Lib Dem leader, but as the prospect of a hung parliament looms, he insists his party won't be jumping into bed with any rival

Unlike the abortive Labour leadership coup, Nick Clegg's showdown went almost unnoticed, but the stakes were nearly as high. As Westminster plotters were striking against the prime minister, the leader of the Liberal Democrats was facing his own momentous political test - an encounter with the ferocious online community Mumsnet.

Clegg's opponents were women with names such as BigBadMummy, LadyBlahBlah and Coldtits, and as several politicians have found to their cost, getting on the wrong side of these ladies can have serious consequences. Luckily, Clegg is a thoroughly modern party leader, as familiar with bitter debates about training babies to eat and sleep as he is with parliamentary procedure. Not for him the blunders of David Cameron, who kept the massed ranks of mothers waiting as he tried to get to grips with a dodgy laptop; or Gordon Brown, derided for failing to name his favourite biscuit.

Clegg gave as good as he got, coolly suggesting that Coldtits should turn the heating on, and says he actively enjoyed the live webchat. "I just gave very honest answers. It's so much better to be forthright about what you think, even if it's something people passionately disagree with," he says breezily.

We meet on Clegg's 43rd birthday, and he is beginning to look his age. He has lost weight in recent months and is clearly exhausted - not surprising, given the hours he keeps. "I was up at 1am, 2.30am, 4am and 5.30am last night," he says with a sigh, explaining that he was "on baby duty" with his 10-month-old boy, Miguel. His wife, Miriam, is a high-powered City lawyer, so the couple take it in turns to do the night shift.

I tentatively suggest they try Gina Ford's strict, to-the-minute routines to encourage their baby to sleep through the night, and he puts his head in his hands. "Don't get me onto Gina Ford," he groans, saying he does not agree with her methods. He and his wife tried to follow her baby-training timetable with their first child but found it "like following a sort of Ikea assembly instruction manual".

Clegg's exhaustion can't all be blamed on his infant son. His day began at 5.30am because he had an appearance on GMTV - part of the build-up to the general election this year. Everyone seems to want a piece of him. For the first time since the 1990s, when Paddy Ashdown was party leader and was holding clandestine meetings with the soon-to-be Labour premier Tony Blair about forming a coalition, the Lib Dems scent power.

"I am being love-bombed," Clegg says, grinning, a phrase used by the Tory party chairman, Eric Pickles, to describe courtship of political opponents.

"Without being truculent about it, I made it very, very clear right from the beginning that I was not interested in that kind of politics. History tells me that it would be daft for the Lib Dems to get involved in dalliances."

Quite so - Ashdown was notoriously betrayed by Blair, who no longer needed his help after winning a landslide majority in 1997. Clegg says the party has learnt the lessons of the past. "We were betrayed by Blair's Janus-faced approach. I speak to Paddy a lot and we barely need to say the obvious. I perfectly understand why my predecessors might have got into discussions with other parties, in totally different circumstances, but I have always been of the view that there is just no incentive at all," he says.

With just over 60 MPs and poll ratings hovering around the 19% mark, Clegg knows the Lib Dems have no realistic hope of winning an outright majority in the election. However, the party is "on the cusp of something very big", he believes.

"We are the party with the biggest geographical spread of support. Six million people voted for us in the last election - a quarter of all those who voted."

He avers that the notion of blue and red politics, in which Labour and the Tories dominate the electoral map, is a "fiction"; he sees Britain now as a nation of floating voters. "The fluidity is immense," he says.

All the same, even he is not pretending the Lib Dems can win. So why not cut a deal now with one of the other two parties, while they are feeling needy and insecure? Some voters might question the point of the third party if it does not negotiate more power when it can.

Clegg insists it would be wrong to start "playing footsie" with his opponents before voters have had their say. "There will be no backroom deals. It is really the people, the voters, who count. It is not for politicians to speculate now how they would cobble together an administration if there is a hung parliament."

Nobody would blame him for enjoying the uncertainty over which party the Lib Dems might jump into bed with. He knows that keeping everyone guessing will prevent the Lib Dems from being eclipsed by the two main parties.

When pressed, he says his strategy in the event of a hung parliament would be determined by whichever party had the clearest mandate. In other words, it would be up to voters which way he swung. "The democratic principle is that the party with the biggest mandate should seek to govern. That is important. We forget that it is really not for politicians to make the rules. We will respond to our marching orders."

Clegg is on a train to Bath, where he is meeting voters in the town hall. It is the 57th such event he has attended in locations across the country. Anyone may turn up and quiz him on policies. "I am not going to pretend it is very scientific. There is no spin - I never have any idea who's going to turn up," he says.

Away from the intense media spotlight at Westminster, such events are an opportunity for him to increase his profile at a local level and hone his debating skills before the campaign begins in earnest. It is an environment in which he can make the odd mistake. His strategists know that soon he will not get away with the sort of amateurism on display over the party's proposed "mansion tax" last year. Vince Cable, the Treasury spokesman, hastily had to revise the threshold for the levy from £1m to £2m after an uproar both inside and outside the party over the impact on people living in areas with high property prices. Another such error will not easily be forgotten if it happens during the campaign.

We are whizzing through spectacularly beautiful countryside, the winter sun casting a pink glow over snow-covered fields. Clegg, an accomplished skier and keen hiker, looks out of the window longingly, saying he wishes he could be in the Lake District this weekend. As usual, however, duty calls, either at home with his wife and three boys in Putney, southwest London, or in his Sheffield Hallam constituency.

The inspector arrives and there is not a flicker of recognition as he checks Clegg's ticket. Nor is he recognised by the woman with the tea trolley. Clegg looks hurt when I point this out, but an aide reminds him he was spotted in Tesco the other day.

"Oh yes, people constantly come up to me," he says. "I was in the queue in the supermarket in Sheffield, and this guy kept staring at me. Eventually he said, 'You know, you look awfully like that bloke Nick Clegg.' I joked, 'Who's he?', and then told him he shouldn't be surprised to find me in my own constituency."

He may not stand out from the crowd, but he has an exotic background. His father, a banker, is half Russian; his aristocratic grandmother fled St Peters burg during the revolution. His mother, Hermance van den Wall Bake, a special-needs teacher, is Dutch and arrived in Britain, aged 12, after being incarcerated in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Indonesia.

His wife, Miriam, is Spanish and a former Middle East expert at the Foreign Office. Her father was a conservative senator in the Spanish parliament. Clegg speaks five languages, and the family is close.

"My dad rings all the time. At the moment he keeps telling me how pleased he is with his new Subaru. He says it's brilliant in the snow. He's like a kid with a new toy. I'm like, 'Right, Dad, well done'."

Like Cameron, Clegg clearly thinks voters prefer politicians who are prepared to talk openly about their family life, a stark contrast to Brown, who refuses to discuss his children. The Lib Dem leader believes voters are fed up with politicians not saying what they think, and says his approach to the election will be to stand up for his convictions, whether it makes him popular or not.

"There is so much ducking and diving going on in politics. Trying to court popularity by constantly ducking and weaving - I think that gets you nowhere."

He cites his demand last year for the resignation of Michael Martin from the position of Speaker after the expenses scandal and his call for an "in or out" referendum on Europe as examples of his willingness to stick his neck out.

Of course, saying exactly what you think can alienate as many people as it attracts - which is why successful politicians usually avoid it. Clegg will soon find out whether the approach pays off.