Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg in 2015

Nicholas William Peter Clegg (born 7 January 1967) is a British media executive and former politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2015 and as Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2007 to 2015. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Sheffield Hallam from 2005 to 2017. An "Orange Book" liberal, he has been associated with both socially liberal and economically liberal policies. Clegg has been president for global affairs at Meta Platforms since 2022, having previously been vice president of global affairs and communications at Facebook from 2018 to 2022.

Quotes

2000s

• If the legislation is passed I will lead a grassroots campaign of civil disobedience to thwart the identity cards programme ... I, and I expect thousands of people like me, will simply refuse ever to register.
  • Clegg vows to defy ID cards law The Guardian (31 October 2007)

• We would support the government by not voting for a referendum [on the Lisbon treaty]. We would vote against a referendum on the treaty and vote in accordance with our long-held position that the real referendum that needs to be had is whether we stay in the EU or not.
  • Nick Clegg, BBC Today Programme (22 January, 2008)

2010s

• Maybe he one day - perhaps we will have to wait for his memoirs - could account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all, which is the illegal invasion of Iraq.
  • Remarks to Jack Straw at Prime Minister's Questions clarifying the government's position on the Iraq war after telling MPs the conflict had been "illegal" (21 July 2010)

• Human Rights Act are not, as some would have you believe, foreign impositions. These are British rights, drafted by British lawyers. Forged in the aftermath of the atrocities of the Second World War. Fought for by Winston Churchill. So let me say something really clear about the Human Rights Act. In fact I'll do it in words of one syllable: It is here to stay.
  • 2011 speech to the Liberal Democrat conference in Birmingham (2011)

• Years of uncertainty caused by a future EU referendum would hit jobs and growth and this is not in the national interest
  • David Cameron promises in/out referendum on EU BBC News (23 January 2013)

• What people have dubbed the snooper's charter - I have to be clear with you, that's not going to happen.
  • Remarks on LBC radio on the Snooper CharterNick Clegg: No 'web snooping' bill while Lib Dems in government BBC.co.uk (25 April 2013)

• [I promise] real remedies for the way the world is today not dangerous fantasies about a bygone world that no longer exists. And that is why I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that we remain part of the European Union because that is how we protect the Britain we love.
  • Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage in heated BBC debate over EU BBC News (3 April 2014)

• The home secretary and the Home Office – they can try to make the case as many times as they like but this idea, which was the idea of the heart of the snooper's charter, that every single website that you visit and every single website that anyone visits in this country is logged somewhere, that's just not going to happen while I'm in government.
  • Remarks on LBC 97.3 radio show on the Snooper Charters No revival of snooper's charter bill before election, says Nick Clegg The Guardian (26 June 2014)

• [Leaving the EU would be a] terrible thing for the British economy
  • Election 2015: EU exit economic self harm, says Clegg BBC News (29 March 2015)

• In 2007 after a night of disappointing election results for our party in Edinburgh, Alex Cole Hamilton said this: if his defeat was part-payment for the ending of child detention, then he accepted it with all his heart. Those words revealed a selfless dignity which is very rare in politics but common amongst Liberal Democrats. If our losses today are part payment for every family that is more secure because of a job we helped to create, every person with depression who is treated with a compassion they deserve, every child who does a little better in school, every apprentice with a long and rewarding career to look forward to, every gay couple who know that their love is worth no less than anyone else’s and every pensioner with a little more freedom and dignity in retirement then I hope at least our losses can be endured with a little selfless dignity too.
  • Resignation speech after losing the 2015 general election UK The Independent (8 May 2015)

• If I was a Brexit voter, I would feel increasingly betrayed that I voted in the belief that all these Brexiteers knew what they were doing
  • Boris Johnson makes light of 'semi-parodic' pro-EU column BBC News (16 October 2016)

• Whether we like it or not the single market, the biggest destination of our goods and services, is a market place of rules,
  • Brexit: Labour would back 'sensible compromise' BBC News (22 January 2017)

• In politics, you live by the sword, and you die by the sword.
  • At the election count in 2017 at Sheffield Hallam, where he lost his seat in the House of Commons Sky News (9 June 2017)

About Clegg

• And what is the reaction of the British political class? Well the Lib Dems, still think that the Euro is a success! I don't quite think where Cleggy gets this from, I don't know. Perhaps he is considering an alternative career as a stand up comedian, once he's out of politics.
  • Nigel Farage, Another segment of a speech held in a UKIP meeting on 21 February 2012. When Nigel Farage explains on the reactions on Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem politicians on the failing Euro currency - Nigel Farage met Angel Merkel

• An officer candidate being interviewed for a posting on the British general staff was once asked to define the role of cavalry in modern warfare. He replied that it was to lend some color and dash to what would otherwise be a somewhat dreary and sordid occasion. Nick Clegg, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, is the equivalent of the cavalry in the case of Thursday’s British general election. Until his eruption onto the scene, the muddy battlefield was a dull trench war between two heavily armored divisions, each of them wearily familiar with the tactics and strategy of the other.
  • Christopher Hitchens, "British society is a three-party system stuffed into a two-party duopoly" 3 May 2010, Slate.com
• Years ago, when I toiled as a columnist for The Nation, Nick Clegg was my intern. (So, for that matter, was Edward Miliband, Gordon Brown’s minister for energy and climate change and brother of Brown’s most likely replacement, Foreign Secretary David Miliband.) I have done my best to trade on this mentoring relationship with power, to little avail. Clegg worked for me in the magazine’s New York offices while I was writing from Washington, so our direct contact was limited. What I chiefly remember, apart from his now-famous personal charm, was how “European” he was. His parentage was partly Dutch and partly Russian. He has since married a Spanish woman and has three children with Spanish names. And, of course, his party is the one most closely identified with the British aspiration to full British engagement in the European Union. This is the strength and the weakness of his position, and of his party.
  • Christopher Hitchens, "British society is a three-party system stuffed into a two-party duopoly" 3 May 2010, Slate.com

• [While deputy prime minister] He's there to serve a very important ceremonial function as David Cameron's lapdog-cum-prophylactic protection device for all the difficult things that David Cameron has to do that cheese off the rest of the ... [ending absent] He’s a kind of shield. He’s a lapdog who’s been skinned and turned into a shield to protect.
  • Boris Johnson interviewed on LBC, as cited in "Nick Clegg is David Cameron's condom, Boris Johnson says" The Telegraph (7 January 2014)