Nick Clegg cuts things fine. Thirty seconds before our train is due to leave for Durham, he hurtles into King’s Cross station, shouting: “Run”. He had to look after the baby, he explains after we get our breath back, and the Tube was slow. “I don’t have chauffeurs like the other party leaders.”
The life of a Lib Dem incumbent can be nasty, short and brutish. Of his two predecessors, Charles Kennedy’s tenure was curtailed by alcoholism and Sir Menzies Campbell was deemed too old. Mbt sale Mr Clegg, who has just passed his second anniversary, admits to a faltering start.
“When I took over, morale was low. It was a horrid time, and I made mistakes. You get thick-skinned pretty damn quickly or you just get knocked over in the animalistic culture of the Commons. They scented blood.”
What were his chief errors? “Lots,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t have done that interview with Piers Morgan [in which he admitted to sleeping with “not more than 30” women]. Any gaucheness has disappeared as Mr Clegg prepares to steer his party through what may be ghd straighteners its greatest challenge. With the latest polls showing the Tory lead over Labour at seven per cent, Mr Clegg is cast as the potential kingmaker. “Yes, of course it [a hung Parliament] is a possibility. Anything could happen. All bets are off. It’s not just that [David] Cameron hasn’t sealed the deal. It’s worse. He’s actually gone backwards.”
Previously, Mr Clegg has refused to favour either party, saying that the leader with the “strongest mandate” would have the right to form a government. Neither leader, he says now, will get his support without signing up to his “fairness” agenda, which includes raising the entry to income tax to £10,000, extra taxes on the rich, a “pupil premium” to Mbt help poorer children, breaking up the banking system and electoral reform.
Even assuming that Mr Cameron would swallow this package, Mr Clegg insists that Lib Dem backing is not up for grabs. “It’s very important people know there have been no deals and understandings.”
Has either Gordon Brown or Mr Cameron wooed him directly? “In the past … no, not about this, he says, sounding slightly flustered. “Have I been approached by the two party leaders in any meaningful way? No, because they know I’m not the slightest [bit] interested.
“I’ve looked very carefully MBT Shoe at my predecessors. Look at how Ming got led up the garden path. Look at the way Paddy was left at the altar. I’ve spoken to people. Paddy is vociferous about it. He says ‘Just don’t go anywhere near them again. It might have made sense then, but don’t [do it].’ ”
Does he blame Tony Blair or Mr Brown for the failure of Lord Ashdown’s coveted centre-left alliance? “It was a conspiracy of Blair’s mendacity and Brown’s obduracy,” he says.
This rebuff, and the pressure on Mr Clegg from his party grandees, will be bleak news for Mr Brown, whose sudden enthusiasm for electoral reform has been construed as bait to tempt the Lib Dems into an alliance should he lose the election.
Is Mr Clegg saying there is no possibility of a Lib-Lab pact? “It’s putting the cart before the horse,” he says. “If voters decide no party deserves an overall majority, then of course you’re going to have to start thinking how we could run a stable government for the British people.”
Like a tightrope walker, Mr Clegg must tread a nervous path between two parties which, in both cases, are his bitter opponents today and tomorrow’s potential bedfellows.
Labour is guilty of “unforgivable authoritarianism. They have destroyed civil liberties and done so much damage to our criminal justice system”. The Tories, conversely, are “economically illiterate” on deficit reduction.
“I have no idea why David Cameron wants to be PM. Except that he’s ambitious, and it’s his turn. But I don’t know what his beliefs or convictions are. He says he believes in social fairness, then he wants to fiddle the system to benefit a tiny number of people. Our private polling shows that people think he is dynamic, ambitious, energetic, but fake. The voters are as lost as I am. I am literally lost. I do not know what the Tory party stands for.”
Though Mr Clegg does not say so, part of his vexation may lie in the fact that big party politics risks eclipsing what should be a Lib Dem moment. The Chilcot inquiry and the expenses scandal both show his party in a favourable light. On the final Legg report, he says: “We have our blemishes. I had a thing about gardening [he had to pay back £910], and there was Chris Huhne’s trouser press. You should see his trousers; they are beautifully pressed. But in terms of the two big abuses – MPs flipping property and becoming spivvy property speculators and/or avoiding capital gains tax — not a single Lib Dem MP did that.” He t hinks the clean-up structure flawed. “It hasn’t helped in the short-term to have these different watchdogs coming in to second guess each other.’’
He also warns Sir Ian Kennedy not to dilute Sir Christopher Kelly’s proposed new rules.
“It will be very bad if he does water it down. However, I am satisfied that on most things he won’t do that, and he might even strengthen some issues.” He has, however, written to Sir Ian, demanding that any MP selling a second home in the transitional period should make no profit, instead returning “the taxpayer’s subsidy, penny by penny.”
He will vote next week for Mr Brown’s proposed referendum on an AV system, “much as I despair of Gordon Mbt Brown’s crablike inability to do anything for 13 years, and his grubby, cynical [approach] now”.
On the inquiry into the Iraq war, which the Lib Dems opposed, he says: “I don’t think it’s quite a whitewash yet. But Blair was questioned with a feather duster. I told [Sir John] Chilcot and Gordon Brown privately that the panel should appoint a special counsel skilled at cross-questioning. They refused.” Mr Clegg is equally frank on other issues, including sleeping routines for babies, over which he recently fell out with the child care guru Gina Ford. Asked if John Terry should be fired as England captain after his alleged affair with a team-mate’s ex-girlfriend, he says: “God, part of me thinks it shouldn’t have much to do with his role as captain.’’
He is less liberal about the Pope, who criticised Britain’s equality legislation on gay people. “I’m married to a Catholic, my mum’s a Catholic and my children are brought up as Catholics. But the Catholic Church can’t seriously object to someone like a janitor being discriminated against on grounds of sexuality.’’ So the Pope was wrong? “Yes … In less dramatic language, maybe he’s not appraised of what the legislation will propose.”
Already, Mr Clegg is preparing for the televised pre-election debates. Though voters may like his warmth and lack of contrivance, he will have to beware the potentially fatal blandishments of his rivals.
The Left-leaning Lib Dem membership would, almost certainly, see a Lib-Con pact as a deal with the devil. Labour, as he suggests, might be too damaged to forge any alliance. “Labour has lost its soul. Parties hollowed out by power tend to sacrifice a leader or two on the way. ghd hair straighteners I wouldn’t envy the next leader of the Labour party because I don’t think they’ll be around for very long.
Where will that leave Nick Clegg, who does not hide his own ambition? “I’m not going to apologise for being interested in power,” he says. He knows the next moves in the political chess game. “Both Brown and Cameron will oscillate between love bombing me in the air war and being absolutely vicious on the ground.” He also knows that “[my] chance will not occur if I spend all my time playing what-if politics”.
Even so, the issue is what happens post-election. One of the great party machines will be in power, however narrowly, and pulling out of the station. The question is whether Mr Clegg will be on the train.
