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Revealed: The United Nations that make up Nick Clegg

By GLEN OWEN
Last updated at 12:09 AM on 18th April 2010

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg with his wife Miriam

Cosmopolitan: Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg with his Spanish-born wife Miriam Gonzalez Durantez

The Spanish wife of Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg allowed herself to measure the curtains in Downing Street yesterday when she said she would quit her highly paid job if her husband became Prime Minister.

Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, who earns a high six-figure salary as a partner with the international law firm DLA Piper, told a Spanish newspaper that there were ‘a number of reasons why I would quit my job...if Nick were Prime Minister and I had to support the country, I would have no problem in doing so’.

Mrs Clegg, 41, also described her husband as a ‘true internationalist’ - despite his repeated references during the leaders’ TV debate last week to the concerns of his constituents in Sheffield.

‘Nick has many international influences in his family and he has also worked in Hungary and Brussels, and he lived in the US,’ she said.

Indeed, Mr Clegg’s exotic lineage and cosmopolitan lifestyle is a world away from his gritty Yorkshire constituency.

The multilingual Lib Dem leader was born to a Dutch mother and a half-Russian father, and employs a German spin doctor.

Mr Clegg’s mother, Hermance van den Wall Bake, was born under Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia and during the Second World War survived three years in a Tenko-style Japanese internment camp with her mother and sister.

After the war, the family returned to Holland, where Hermance’s father Hemmy – a friend of the country’s royal family – became president of the Dutch banking giant ABN.

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Mr Clegg’s parents met in 1956 when Hermance visited Cambridge and met Nicholas Clegg Snr, the son of Russian-born Baroness Kira von Engelhardt.

International: Mr Clegg's Press spokeswoman, German Lena Pietsch

They raised their four children in affluent Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire, benefiting from Clegg Snr’s successful banking career which has helped the family to buy a 20-room chalet in the Alps and a chateau near Bordeaux. He is now chairman of the United Trust Bank.

Before becoming the MP for Sheffield Hallam five years ago, Nick Clegg honed his five languages during a decade-long spell in Brussels working for the European Commission – including three years as Chief of Staff to Tory Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan – and as an MEP.

It was during his time in the Belgian capital that Mr Clegg found himself ‘bewitched’ by his future wife Miriam, even learning Spanish to woo her.

Mrs Clegg, a Roman Catholic, admits that she refused her husband’s plea to give English names to their three sons, Antonio, Alberto and Miguel.

Mr Clegg said: ‘Miriam told me in no uncertain terms that if they had to live with this short, stubby Anglo-Saxon name of Clegg, then they needed something a little more exotic to come before it.’

Miriam’s father, Jose Antonio Gonzalez Caviedes, was a Madrid senator who died in a car crash in 1996, four years before Miriam married Nick.

Her mother, Mercedes, teaches in the family’s home town of Olmedo. Mr Clegg’s cosmopolitanism even extends to his Press spokeswoman, German-born Lena Pietsch, who has been at his side since he became leader three years ago.

Mr Clegg, 43, plays down his international background. When it was pointed out that he was only a quarter English, he said: ‘Well, biologically...yeah. But I was born here, brought up here, went to school here, and I feel very proud to be British. I have been very fortunate to have different bits to my identity. That’s enriched me.’

Clegg’s ‘secret’ lobbyist past

The Liberal leader was accused last night of trying to cover up his work for a controversial lobby firm.

Mr Clegg has called for ‘more openness and transparency’ in politics. But there is no mention in his CV of his time with GJW between 1992 and 1993.

The firm helped Colonel Gaddafi resist efforts to send the Lockerbie bomber to the UK for trial in 1992 and was also embroiled in the 1998 ‘cash for access’ scandal.

A former employee said: ‘I was surprised to see Nick has left GJW off his CV. I was proud to work for them but it seems Nick would rather keep it quiet.’

A spokesman for Mr Clegg admitted that he had not referred to GJW on his CV but denied he had tried to cover it up.

Sunday, 18 April 2010