Leveson inquiry: ‘I was put at the children’s end of the table’ says Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg told the Leveson inquiry yesterday the press had “ignored or derided” him and the Liberal Democrats before they entered government. The Deputy Prime Minister said that at one dinner party with Rupert Murdoch and News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks in 2009, he had been put at the “very end of the table where the children sit”. He also said most of his meetings with editors and proprietors were “fairly humdrum”, adding when he became party leader in 2008, many senior figures did not “know me from Adam”. Talking about the dinner on 16 December, 2009, that he attended with Mr Murdoch, Mrs Brooks and Sunday Times editor John Witherow, Mr Clegg said he was little more than “an observer”. “I was at the very end of the table, where the children sit, so to speak,” he added. The following March he had lunch with Sun editor Dominic Mohan, and a “brief” meeting with Mrs Brooks and Mr Murdoch lasting a maximum of ten minutes. Mr Clegg also revealed he knew News Corporation lobbyist Fred Michel because their children attended the same school. Discussing his meetings with editors and proprietors, he said he often could not remember what they talked about. “All of these meetings are a whole lot less intriguing and surprising, I suspect, to the outside world than it might initially seem,” Mr Clegg said.