Nick Clegg

```
This article is written in the 'future' (2022) and thus does not reflect the state of affairs in the present day, 1954. It does however represent a premonition of what is to come.

```

## Politics

### Ranks held

Foreign Minister 2005-2009Business Minister 2004-2005
Transport Minister 2002-2004
Deputy Home Minister 2000-2002, 2011-2014

**Nikolai Nikolaevich Zakrevsky**, known as **Nick Clegg**, is a former British Exile, businessman and former politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Union of Britain from 2005 to 2009. Between 2000 and 2014, when he formally stepped down from frontline politics, he was a major figure in the government of the United Democrats, and twice stood for leadership of the party; in 2009 and in 2014, both times finishing the runner-up. He was Member of the Common Assembly for Sheffield Hallam from 2000 to 2017.

Born in the village of Berezova Rudka, near Kiev, in the Russian Republic, Clegg was the grandson of Kira von Engelhardt, a Russian aristocrat, and Hugh Clegg, a British doctor and journalist. Engelhardt's family had left Russia in the early 1920s to escape the instability prevalent in the country at the time; after the British Revolution, however, they returned to Russia, where they had a son, Nikolai Yugovich Clegg. In the 1950s, Engelhardt inherited an estate in Poltava Oblast, along with the right to use the name Zakrevsky; the Cleggs subsequently adopted this name, so that by the time of Nick Clegg's birth in 1967 his surname was formally and legally Zakrevsky.

Clegg attended the Petrograd Commercial College, before studying anthropology at Imperial Moscow University. As a student there, he was involved for a time with the conservative United Russia Party, something he initially denied when it later surfaced during his 2009 leadership campaign. He worked as a journalist for European affairs for two years, before taking up a post in 1994 with the Eurasian Union in Gdansk, working for TACINAS in coordinating aid to the states of the former USSA.

In 1996, Clegg became the Petrograd Gazette's foreign correspondent in the Union of Britain, reporting on events in the increasingly tumultuous nation as Tony Blair's Third Way reforms gathered pace. As part of his reporting he travelled extensively with Kenny Ashdown as the latter campaigned up and down the country for greater liberal reform, conducting several in-depth interviews with the leader. Ashdown was more than happy to get his message out to Eastern audiences, whilst Clegg himself became increasingly inspired by the democratic activist. When, in 1998, Blair formally reincorporated the British Government-in-Exile, in the process entitling all those with British Exile roots to gain British citizenship, Clegg applied, and soon after joined the emerging United Democrats. In the historic 1999 election, he stood as the UD candidate for the seat of Sheffield Hallam using his grandfather's surname, and was successfully elected to the Common Assembly amidst the UD's landslide.

Present in London during the events of the 1999 Boxing Day Putsch, Clegg initially reported on the coup d'etat attempt on behalf of Russian media, before being enlisted by Alastair Campbell to be the UD's spokesperson on news coverage of the coup when the latter had to be elsewhere. This prominent role immensely advanced Clegg's profile in the public sphere, with his Russian-accented speech remembered by many. It also marked him out as a highly capable individual: this and his previous relationship with Ashdown meant that in the formation of the UD's first ministry, Clegg, at only 33, was appointed Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, a position entitling him to attend Cabinet. Amongst his colleagues in the Home Office was David Cameron, later to succeed him as both Deputy Home Minister and Foreign Minister.

In Government, Clegg's star ascended rapidly. Enjoying both the patronage of Ashdown and of Charles Kennedy, a fellow former journalist, Clegg quickly became one of the foremost figures in the UD government despite his political inexperience against some other ministers. In 2002 he became a full Cabinet minister when he was appointed Minister of Transport; only two years later, following the 2004 election he was promoted to Minister of Business and Industry. In the 2005 leadership contest to succeed Kenny Ashdown, Clegg was a prominent part of Charles Kennedy's campaign, acting as a keynote speaker at his leadership launch event alongside Chris Huhne. Kennedy's subsequent victory in the contest assured Clegg a prime position in his administration, which came in the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs - at 38 years old, Clegg was the youngest holder of the office since Anthony Eden some seventy years earlier.

Clegg's tenure was most distinguished by the Aranjuez Ceasefire Agreement in the Iberian Civil War, in which Clegg played a key role in brokering. For his part in the negotiation process, which lasted some five months total, in 2008 he won the Nobel Peace Prize together with Iberian human rights lawyer Miriam Gonzalez Durantez. Yet Clegg's run as Foreign Minister was dominated by internal strife, as the question of Kennedy's suitability for the role of Minister-President grew increasingly prominent. Such discussions arose as early as January 2006, after it emerged that Kennedy had been receiving treatment for alcoholism: they reached fever-pitch by late 2008, in the immediate aftermath of some third of the United Democrats defecting to the breakaway New Union Party.

Through all the strife, Clegg remained steadfastly loyal to his boss, to the frustration of many in the United Democrats who saw the young and capable Foreign Minister as their best bet of averting total electoral wipeout come the next election. Not blind to opportunity himself, Clegg agonised over whether or not to take action, a dilemma that culminated over the Christmas period of 2008-09 in a spectacularly botched coup attempt dismantled by Alastair Campbell. When later that year the New Union Party, together with the Opposition, brought down the UD's 2009 budget and forced a general election, the party would lose all but 92 seats and be relegated to the third-largest group in the Common Assembly, barely ahead of the Labour Party.

Such a breathtaking defeat saw Charles Kennedy's prompt resignation, and Clegg was immediately seen as a frontrunner to succeed him. Yet he faced a major challenge from the former Home Minister Simon Hughes, and it became increasingly apparent that of the surviving United Democrat MCAs, many were unsatisfied with the status-quo centrist politics that Clegg represented. He ultimately topped the first round of voting, but after the elimination of former Financial Minister David Blunkett, whose supporters fell in behind Hughes, Clegg lost the second ballot 60-32. As a gesture of party unity, Clegg subsequently joined Hughes's shadow cabinet as Shadow Minister of Commerce, whilst his allies David Laws and Chris Huhne became the Shadow Financial and Environmental Ministers respectively.