Nick Clegg’s sex confession shows why politicians should never try to look normal
It was the 14 pints, I always thought, that ultimately did it for William Hague. That was the beginning of the end. There must have been teenagers out there in the 1970s who did, indeed, drink 14 pints a day. It’s just that they probably weren’t the same teenagers who, aged 16, spent their spare time practising a piping address for the Conservative party conference. Hague said he drank 14 pints; Britain thought ‘nah’. Britain thought, ‘Come out to the pub with me, you baldy wee pluke, and I bet you couldn’t handle more than four.’ The problem wasn’t that he was being overly confessional, it was more the opposite. It was a ham-fisted attempt at being confessional about something which it was suddenly evident that he didn’t know all that much about.
And so to Nick Clegg and his sex life. Speaking to Piers Morgan in GQ (such a bad idea, and politicians keep doing it), Clegg is asked how many women could attest to his prowess in the bedroom. ‘No more than 30,’ he says. Then he backtracks. ‘It’s a lot less than that.’ Is this the same sort of thing? At first glance, you’d think not. You believe him, more or less. And don’t be fooled by the backtrack. That first answer — that’s the one to pay attention to. At least roughly speaking, a man knows. A man might say 30 when he meant 27 or 34 but he wouldn’t say 30 when he meant eight.
So. Give or take, the leader of the Liberal Democrats has had 30 sexual partners. Ought we be surprised? On one level, obviously, not. This is a Liberal Democrat we are talking about. A Liberal Democrat could confess to a nine-year affair with an honestto-god elk, which resulted in an elk lovechild that he kept in an elk dungeon, and many of us would merely roll a weary eye. Indeed, there is possibly something unique about the Liberal Democrats, and their ability to have enormous amounts of sex without stirring any envy in the general populace whatsoever. Porn stars, prostitutes, even Peter Stringfellow — there can be a certain dirty glamour to it. Liberal Democrats? No. Never. Even Max Mosley wouldn’t pretend to be a Liberal Democrat. That’s just sick.
Is 30 a lot? Hard to know. I’d say it is, but ask around and you get a lot of different answers. Clegg is 41, and he has been married since he was 32. In his gap year, ten years earlier, he worked as a ski instructor. A few weeks ago, perhaps significantly, he told the Guardian that he was ‘quite Dutch, culturally speaking’. So, assuming that he has been sexually active since he was 16, and assuming (perhaps charitably, for a Lib Dem) that he has never played away, we are talking 30 women in 16 years, or slightly under two per annum. Put like that it doesn’t sound too bad, although one does start to wonder why he never had any long-term relationships which kept his score down, or whether he did, and was just very Dutch indeed.
Look, I know I’m being horribly invasive. That’s the whole point. I didn’t start it. Nick Clegg did. What the hell is he doing telling Piers Morgan about his sex life? Why does he have any desire for us to know? I’d be happier if I thought he had just blurted it out, blindsided by Morgan’s persistence. But no. In the same interview, on the drugs issue, he didn’t give an inch. So I think he thought about it. I think he said to himself, ‘The public have a right to know what kind of chap they are dealing with. A shagger. Woof!’ He probably thought he was being refreshingly candid. A breath of fresh air. A dose of normality. Etc.
Lord, spare us from politicians trying to look normal. Nobody looks normal under the lens, them least of all. They get it wrong. They think 14 pints is normal. In fact, when politician go out of their way to look nor mal, that’s the least normal they ever look. Think of the Tory minister’s kiss by the garden gate, or the Hamilton-esque freakshow of reality television. Think of David Cameron, inviting ITN to film his toddlers having breakfast. Does he even realise how gruesome that is? Does Clegg?
It’s not normal. It makes you think they wouldn’t know normal if it bit them. Normal people run a mile from that kind of stuff. And this is coming from a columnist whose ‘I’ button is worn nearly smooth. You don’t see me announcing how many people I’ve slept with, do you? Because it’s none of your bloody business. Clear off.
It gave me some pause, that story, I have to admit it. A story that stretches credibility? In the April issue of GQ? It’s not an April Fool, is it?
Happily not. It would have been a dodgy one if it were. Libel laws aside, there’s a fine line between a hoax and an outright lie. Clegg and the elk lovechild, that could have been an April Fool. Nick Clegg and 3,000 lovers, maybe. Clegg and 30 is just too plausible. Or is it? How many lovers is normal for a political leader? Until David Cameron next appears on local news, we may never know.
And yet I was concerned. So just before filing this, I had a quick check to see if there was anything else in the Tuesday papers I could write about, if everything fell apart. Blimey. Loads. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has been invited to join Gordon Brown’s government of all the talents, Robert Mugabe is pretending there wasn’t an election, Harriet Harman is to do PMQs, the BBC has made a documentary about flying penguins, Gordon Ramsay is banning swearing in his restaurants. It’s all go.
Some must be hoaxes. But which? On page 18, the Sun had a picture of a turtle who was addicted to cigarettes. Two pages later, there is a story about Nicolas Sarkozy getting stretched in order to be as tall as his wife. Two hoaxes? No hoaxes? The reader feels like Orwell’s creatures at the end of Animal Farm. We look from pig to man, and from man to pig, but it is already impossible to say which is which.
Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.
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