Nick Clegg opens up his diary
Waiting in the Scottish sunshine to meet the Pope, my eye is drawn up Arthur’s Seat. I feel a sudden, strong desire to climb it. A long walk is overdue, especially after a night on the ‘sleeper train’ — surely one of the crueller oxymorons in the English language. Long walks are my indulgence. But of course I wait dutifully in line. His Holiness is a sincere, softly spoken and modest man. He also wears very red shoes. Redder, certainly, than any in Miriam’s wardrobe. It is one of those things you only notice when you are in close proximity to him.
To Liverpool, for the Liberal Democrats’ party conference. I often criticise the tribalism of party politics. But I admit that being surrounded by friends of old, colleagues from former political battles, is like going home. So tribalism is not all bad. I am not as nervous about the main speech as in previous years, perhaps because I feel certain of my message. ‘Stick with us’ is the refrain — through what are certain to be tough months of a five-year recovery schedule. On the way to conference, I was offered an anecdote by a Liverpool cabbie. ‘It’s like this, isn’t it? If someone’s sick in the back of my cab, nobody blames the person who comes with a mop and bucket to clean it up, do they?’ A little too graphic, I fear, for my conference speech.
After the usual round of receptions, parties and media interviews, I have an early departure to New York. As we fly over Nova Scotia, I take a break from the slab of briefing papers, and look down at the empty landscape.
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