Better than his party

I have been awaiting a definitive biography of Nick Clegg for a while. And while I’m not entirely sure whether Chris Bowers’ Nick Clegg, The Biography quite gets there, don’t let me discourage you. This is an excellent book and a fascinating insight into the man.

The trouble is that most of us who enjoy reading about our leaders have been used to being thrown great hunks of red meat scandal, vile gossip and an undertone that the subject is far more of a shit than we had dared imagine. We then toddle off to bed, sleeping soundly in the reassurance that our hero has feet of clay like the rest of us.

If this book is to be believed (and to be fair, it is painstakingly researched), Clegg has no redeeming defects. Marcel Theroux, with whom Clegg travelled America, cross-legged and in a state of transcendental meditation in the back of the car, summed up his character succinctly: 

‘Nick’s a good guy, and if you don’t have good guys doing the job he’s doing, then there’ll be arseholes doing it, so I want him to hang in there.