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Catching up with the BBC’s excellent history of Britain & the EU since 2010, “Inside Europe: 10 Years of Turmoil”, I spotted what I should politely call a memory lapse from Nick Clegg - on how Europe was not an issue at the founding of the Coalition. This just isn’t the case. 1/5
Clegg says in episode 1: “I said to David...that Europe should not hijack our government as it had previous governments, and he said "Absolutely”... So of all the issues we had to discuss, Europe was at that stage the most straightforward.” But he forgot about May 11, 2010. 2/5
On May 11, 2010, day 5 of the post-election interregnum, Nick Clegg had one final phone call with then-PM Gordon Brown, in which Gordon told Nick he was going to the Palace to resign as PM. Clegg pleaded with Gordon not to go, to hang on for just a little while longer. Why? 3/5
Clegg wanted Brown to stay on as PM because there was one issue he had yet to nail down in the coalition deal with David Cameron: Europe. He had failed to secure an explicit agreement to prevent Cameron taking the Govt in a more extreme anti-EU direction. He needed more time. 4/5
Gordon rightly told Clegg that he wouldn’t stay on as PM to give Clegg negotiating leverage. He left no.10 an hour later. In the end, Clegg was right to worry about his new bedfellow. Cameron was not trustable on Europe. Clegg in 2018 clearly forgot about Clegg in May 2010. 5/5
