Nick Clegg became the leader of the Liberal Democrats in December 2007. He had previously been the Lib Dem chief spokesperson on home affairs and before that their spokesperson on Europe.
He is also the Lib Dem MP for Sheffield Hallam.
Nick Clegg is the son of a half-Russian wealthy banker and a Dutch mother Hermance Eulalie van den Wall Bake, who was a special needs teacher that arrived in Britain as a youngster after being incarcerated in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
Nick Clegg studied at Westminster School and then gained a 2.1 in social anthropology at Robinson College Cambridge.
He also went to Minnesota University in the USA and College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium, where he met his wife-to-be, Miriam Gonzáles Durántez. He was studying European politics, she was studying economics.
His jobs have included being a fact-checker for Christopher Hitchens, working as a lobbyist for a firm called GJW, being a journalist with the likes of the Financial Times and Guardian Unlimited, being a European commission official and then being an adviser to EU commissioner Sir Leon Brittan – after Clegg was recommended by his family’s neighbour Lord Carrington.
Nick Clegg then turned from bureaucrat to politician when he became an MEP for the East Midlands from 1999 to 2004, and then LibDem MP for Sheffield Hallam from 2005.
He had a brief spell between being an MEP and MP lecturing part-time at Sheffield and Cambridge Universities.
Nick Clegg’s wife Miriam works as a Partner in an international law firm.
Miriam was a former Middle East expert at the foreign office and her father was a conservative senator in the Spanish parliament.
They have three sons Antonio, Alberto and Miguel.
A detailed record of Nick Clegg’s donations, voting and speaking record, and expenses is available at They Work For You.
On 6 May 2010, in the general election, the number of Liberal Democrat seats under Nick Clegg reduced to 57.
Nevertheless, because it was a hung parliament with neither Labour or the Conservatives gaining an overall majority, it put the Liberal Democrats in a pivotal position and they were courted by both sides.
In the end the Liberal Democrats joined the Conservatives in a coalition government with David Cameron as prime minister and Nick Clegg as deputy prime minister.
In the May 2015 general election the Liberal Democrats had a terrible performance with only 8 MPs returned and Nick Clegg resigned as leader, saying the results had been “immeasurably crushing”.
Nick Clegg was knighted in the 2018 New Years Honours