"I make one exception": Nick Clegg admits to personal feud with just one politician - Ed Balls

Deputy PM Nick Clegg has revealed Ed Balls is the only politician he has a personal feud with.

The Lib Dem leader said he had a rule to keep arguments about politics - but “made an exception” for the Labour Shadow Chancellor.

The comments came in a special Christmas edition of Mr Clegg’s LBC radio show at Great Ormond Street hospital in London.

He said: “I always try to keep a good sense of humour, and if I have an argument with someone to keep the argument about what the argument is about and not allow it too often to become sort of personal.

“I make one exception, for a man named Ed Balls. But other than that I try not to make it about insults and stuff.”

Answering questions from an audience of young people, the Liberal Democrat leader revealed that two of his sons had needed hospital treatment in the past.

He also said his mother had inspired his political career, and revealed that him and his brothers and sisters secretly insult people in Dutch.


Mr Clegg was challenged to say what he found most useful about being able to speak five languages.

“Probably the most useful is that my brothers and sisters and I can say slightly rude things about people in Dutch confident in the knowledge unless they’re Dutch speakers they don’t know what we’re saying about them,” he said.

“There has actually been a case where someone said something slightly rude about someone in a lift... in Dutch and the person just turned around in Dutch and said ‘we understand every word you’ve said’.”

Mr Clegg said he had been treated in an NHS hospital before, but not for anything major.

“Two of my children have been in hospital in the past, one of them quite seriously,” he added.

“Like all families we have been in and out and depend massively on the NHS.”

Mr Clegg reiterated his opposition to the 11% pay rise for MPs announced by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) earlier this month.

“I hope it won’t happen, and it is wrong, and it shouldn’t happen. I very much hope it won’t,” he said.

He stressed that the watchdog was “completely independent” of government,

but urged it to think again before finalising the proposals after the general election in 2015.



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Clegg and his wretched party are as bad, if not worst than the Tories, compliant with the destruction of the poor.

He (and his party) will be consigned to the political dustbin of history after the next election...The best place for him and them.