Clegg in full flow at the Union Freddie Dyke

One would not have expected Nick Clegg to have come to the Cambridge Union and been too complimentary about the Brexit campaign. Yet the ferocity with which he condemned some of its leading figures was something of a surprise.

“I thought they were crass, stupid, and offensive” said Clegg of Boris Johnson’s comments about Barack Obama, and his ‘part-Kenyan’ ancestry. Surely Clegg must still have a modicum of respect for some of the other figures in the Brexit campaign? “The problem for Boris, and indeed for Nigel Farage, all these slightly swivel-eyed Brexit people…” begins one of Clegg’s answers. Perhaps not.

Generally, Clegg was scathing about how the other side have conducted their campaign. “They’ve given up trying to win a debate, so they’re now just trying to win a shouting match.” He argues that despite interventions from the like of Sir Andrew Dilnot, the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, and the Treasury, the Brexit campaign have refused to engage with their arguments, preferring to say simply that “every official in the Treasury is a charlatan and a liar.” Although obviously disappointed with the standard of debate, one detected a certain bullishness in Clegg’s case. “It’s descending into this sort of school ground set of insults, and I think the moment that happens, you know that they've lost the argument.”

Similarly, Clegg was in no doubt as to what would happen if Britain were to leave the EU: in the short term, there would be market volatility and most likely a currency decline. He conceded that the SNP would have a convincing case for holding another independence referendum, and perhaps most worryingly of all, Putin would be “rubbing his hands with glee.”

This was not just a case of ‘Project Fear’. Rather, Clegg offered one of the more positive cases for staying in the EU by turning one of Brexit’s key themes on its head. He agreed that it was a question of autonomy and taking control, but argued that the problems facing the UK, whether that be crime or environmental, were such that only “supra-national responses” would actually allow us to exert any control. In a bold claim, he made the case that “taking decisions in concert with other countries is an extension of our control and autonomy.”

Clegg also speculated on how Britain came to have such a problematic relationship with the EU, citing the veteran Belgian MEP Willy De Clerq in his case that in fact Britain had played a leading role in shaping the EU as it stands. “Why do we deny the fruits of our own handiwork?” asked Clegg, when Britain was largely responsible for the creation of the single market and the expansion eastwards of the union in the face of French and German resistance.

The U.K. made “two fatal errors” when it came to our foreign policy in the aftermath of the Second World War, Clegg asserted. We placed too much of an emphasis on the ‘Special Relationship’ with the United States, failing to realise that “nostalgia and language don’t always count.” Equally, we were far too sceptical of the nascent European project, only joining it when we had been spurned by the U.S. “We joined out of a sense of weakness. If we can’t beat them, join them.”

Clegg also took the time to reflect on his time in government, and the general election which proved so disastrous for his party. He noted that he had previously underestimated the importance of the “optics of power”, and that no matter how much work had gone into policy behind the scenes, it was the person who took centre stage and announced it that took the credit.

That was one of a number of moments where more than a hint of frustration seemed to creep into Clegg’s answers. He noted that in government he simply “couldn’t do what he wanted”, and when challenged by an audience member on the Lib Dems’ approach to electoral reform, Clegg’s initial answer was to the point: “what would you have done?”.

But what of the current state of affairs? “The election last year delivered a conventional outcome, another Conservative government, but actually disguised a very unconventional political landscape.”

Clegg even had some encouraging words for those hoping for a change in the status-quo. “I’m pretty confident that the present state of affairs is an artificial one, almost an accidental one. The Conservatives did not expect to win, and almost by accident a sort of unholy alliance has emerged between the SNP and the Conservatives. The SNP scared the living daylights out of their voters by saying how ghastly English Conservatives are, and English Conservatives said how ghastly these ferocious hordes from north of the border are to scare the living daylights out of English voters, and they corral voters into their separate corners. I think that might go on for a bit, but it can’t go on forever.”

Clegg finished up by offering some thoughts on how people should operate in politics: “Don’t go into politics if you want to sit on your hands.” With a message perhaps intended for the more extreme wings of the Conservative and Labour parties, he declared that “politics is a messy thing; a lot of life is messy. A lot of people on the left and right have developed such a purist attitude towards politics that any compromise with reality is regarded as a betrayal.”

“At the end of the day someone has to step up to the plate and do things” concluded Clegg. No matter what one thinks of Clegg and his time as Deputy Prime Minister, he certainly could not be accused of not practising what he preaches.