Nick Clegg

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2010

⏱️ 37 minutes

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is the Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

Of his career, he says: "Joining the Liberal Party was a no brainer for me - when you're a young man, you don't get a calculator out saying 'Am I going to get to power?' you get propelled forward by idealism". Yet this week more than any other, critics have questioned whether his interest in power has meant his ideals have had to take a back seat.

In this candid conversation, he describes the behind-the-scenes negotiations that underpinned the coalition and he shares the personal trauma when, after his wife and baby son had both been dangerously ill, he wondered whether a political career would place too heavy a burden on his family.

Producer: Leanne Buckle

Record: Schubert - Impromptu No.3 in G flat major Book: The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa Luxury: A stash of cigarettes.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:10.0	For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.
0:17.0	Radio 4. My castaway this week is the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. As Deputy Prime Minister,
0:39.7	he's the most powerful liberal since Lloyd George led a coalition government during the First
0:43.8	World War. 90 years ago the liberals needed the support of the Conservatives in order to
0:48.7	govern. This time around of course it's the Lib Dems doing the propping up. There's a life outside
0:54.4	Westminster too, he speaks five languages, has three young children and worked on
0:59.4	both the left and the right of the political spectrum before standing for election himself.
1:05.0	He says, joining the Liberal Party was a no-brainer for me.
1:09.2	When you're a young man, you don't get a calculator out saying, when am I going to get to power you're
1:14.2	propelled forward by idealism so propelled by idealism net clag but not
1:19.5	apparently sustained by it and your ideals weren't much in evidence as you patted George
1:23.7	Osborne on the back. This week after he delivered the most swinging cuts this
1:27.4	country has seen in living memory. Well of course I wasn't doing so with any sense of relish or triumphalism about what we had to announce, but we've had to as a government announce extraordinary difficult and unpopular and controversial things.
1:43.6	And I've spent, well, every day of this process,
1:46.4	pretty well every minute of this process,
1:48.6	asking myself whether there are sort of pain-free alternatives, whether we're doing the right thing, and I genuinely believe that there is no easy
1:59.4	alternative.
2:00.4	And people's beef with you, of course, is that the Tories are doing what they say on the
2:04.3	tin there's George Osborne doing what everybody knew he'd do but there are you doing
2:09.0	something that people quite clearly did not think you would support, I don't of course accept that because I don't think there's anything progressive or
	...

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