Good decision. The tittle-tattle is everywhere in the Tory papers today as they attempt to halt the Clegg bandwagon ahead of tonight's second televised leaders' debate. Here are the key allegations: BANK PAYMENTS The allegation: The Daily Telegraph is reporting that three registered Lib Dem donors, all senior businessmen, made monthly payments of up to £250 each into Clegg's personal bank account in 2006, before he became the party's leader. The "automated payments" were made by Ian Wright, a senior executive at the drinks firm Diageo, Neil Sherlock, the head of public affairs at KPMG, and Michael Young, a former gold-mining executive. They were made at a time when Clegg was a recently elected MP (for Sheffield Hallam) and the Lib Dems' home affairs spokesman. The explanation: A Lib Dem spokeswoman said: "The donations were properly made and declared and were used to fund part of the salary of an additional member of Nick Clegg’s parliamentary staff." She denied any wrong-doing. The payments went into Clegg's personal account "because it was the easiest way of setting that up", she said. "The Telegraph story is wrong in fact and we regard any implication of impropriety as unacceptable." 'NAZI SLUR' "Watching Germany rise from its knees after the war and become a vastly more prosperous nation has not been easy on the febrile British psyche," he wrote. "All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still. "A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. We need to be put back in our place." The Mail claims the contents of the article "cast grave doubts over his judgment of international affairs" ahead of tonight's debate, when the main topic will be foreign policy. The explanation: A Lib Dem spokesman says the article was taken out of context. It had been written in the light of "an incident of anti-German prejudice". Clegg was "against prejudice in any form". THE EU GRAVY TRAIN The allegation: The Times has conducted research into Clegg's rewards for 10 years in Brussels - five years as an official at the European Commission and five as an MEP — and discovered that he received a total of €1.9 million in salary and expenses. His gross salary with the Commission was calculated as €282,518 while his salary as an MEP, from 1999 to 2004, was €484,883. The figures are based on average exchange rates at the time. The Times article says: "Further research by Open Europe, a campaign group for EU reform, showed that Mr Clegg claimed up to €52,444 in allowances as an official and another €1.05 million in the famously generous funds available to MEPs for their travel, office and subsistence." The paper makes it clear that "there is no suggestion that Mr Clegg broke any of the EU rules" but quotes Mats Persson, director of Open Europe, as saying: "By no definition can he be considered a political outsider and his claims to being one are simply not credible. "For ten years he was on the EU's generous payroll, so it is no surprise that he is out of step with the British public on Europe, including on his insistence that the UK should still join the euro, which is a ludicrous idea in light of recent events." The explanation: A spokesman said: "The expenses system in the European Parliament was utterly different from the one in Westminster. Nick Clegg used the per diem lump sum exactly as it was intended — to work in three different places. Filed under: Nick Clegg, General ElectionTory press sharpen their knives for Nick Clegg
Conservative-backing papers pursue anti-Clegg stories on morning of second TV debate
Thursday, 22 April 2010
LAST UPDATED 7:51 AM, APRIL 22, 2010
n an interview with the Independent published today, the Liberal Democrats' leader Nick Clegg says he doesn't read the newspapers because he doesn't want to be distracted by tittle-tattle about his past life.
The allegation: The Daily Mail has dug up an article Clegg wrote while he was an MEP in Brussels which, the paper says, is an attack on "our national pride" and a "Nazi slur" on Britain.
In the article, written for the Guardian in 2002, Clegg compared Britain's efforts to shake off the effects of World War Two with those of Germany.
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