Nick Clegg has occupied a significant place in the popular imagination of the British public since the General Election of 2010. The extraordinary character of politics has shone a more intense light on the Liberal Democrat party with its leader standing in its full glare. Katy Parry and Kay Richardson examine media coverage of ‘Cleggmania’ before and after the election and find an increasing personification of British politics with not-so-subtle undertones of homophobia and sexism

Parry, Katy

Richardson, Kay

English

LSE Research Online

Credit: Liberal Democrats (Creative Commons BY ND)blogs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2011/11/16/nick-clegg-celebrity-politicians/Nick Clegg’s rise and fall as a celebrity politician highlightsthe Deputy Prime Minister as a victim of the increasingpersonification of British politics.Nov 16 2011Nick Clegg has occupied a significant place in the popular imagination of the British publicsince the General Election of 2010. The extraordinary character of politics has shone a moreintense light on the Liberal Democrat party with its leader standing in its full glare. KatyParry and Kay Richardson examine media coverage of ‘Cleggmania’ before and after theelection and find an increasing personification of British politics with not-so-subtleundertones of homophobia and sexism.The flurry of excitement provoked by Nick Clegg’s very sudden emergence into publicvisibility in April 2010 and his rise to the heart of government as Deputy Prime Ministeroffered a unique opportunity to observe the hasty moulding of a new political persona, butthe Nick Clegg that the public has grown to know over the past 18 months is little more thana construct assembled from a range of semiotic resources distributed across the UKmediascape.During 2010, we audited a range of politically-inflected media outputs in the UK, acrossmedia platforms and genres, encompassing editorial cartoons, parliamentary sketch-writing,comedy panel shows, blogs, reality TV and political programming (such as Question Time,This Week). This research forms just one part of a much larger study on the media andBritain’s cultural landscape that relates specifically to politics. Our study on Nick Clegg focuses on therepetitions and patterns of figurative language and visual imagery drawn upon in the efforts to organise,understand, mock or scorn the phenomenon of his sudden rise to prominence. Studying a range of seriousand comic media forms has allowed us to trace the crucial inter-discursivity and interdependence of thevarious media constructions and interpretations of Clegg as a political actor, public celebrity and symbol.The excitement when Clegg firstemerged into public visibility was somarked that the term ‘Cleggmania’quickly entered the political lexicon.Many comparisons followed, especiallyin  the days after the first televiseddebate: he was the Susan Boyle ofpolitics, due to his surprise performancein a TV ‘talent’ show; he offeredObama-like promises of hope andchange (‘I wonder if Mr Obama knowsthat he, Barack, is the Nick Clegg ofAmerican politics’, Quentin Letts wrotein the Daily Mail; for Andrew Gimson ofthe Telegraph he was James Bond‘abseiling into the headquarters ofGoldman Sachs’An interesting visual exemplar of thistrend was the portrayal of Clegg asPinocchio by cartoonist Martin Rowsonin the Guardian. While this fictionalcharacter is a popular surrogate in cartoonists’ depiction of politicians, it is usually employed to caricaturethe politician as a liar, with Pinocchio’s nose outrageously growing as he tells more lies (e.g. Richard Nixon,George W. Bush). In contrast with such previous examples, Rowson fruitfully explores the alignmentsbetween Clegg and Pinocchio through the latter’s desire to be a ‘real’ boy, playing with the theme of Cleggas not quite a ‘real’ politician, an innocent or an amateur who has found himself in the murky world of politics.Such portrayals undermined Clegg on multiple levels; read in a straightforward manner, he was aninexperienced boy in a man’s world (in a male-dominated election); read alternatively, with a sceptical takeon his supposed guilelessness, this ‘innocence’ was a cunning ruse to mask his political capabilities. Thesecond reading, proffered at times in the right-wing press, posed Clegg as a double danger, not justdestabilising the probability of a Conservative majority after the election but also bringing uncertainty to thepolitical process itself.Just as the boyishness and illusory qualities of Clegg were employed to define and diminish him, oncespeculation mounted around the possibility of a hung parliament and future coalition government, Clegg wasre-cast as seducer and seduced, including in female form. Possibly prompted by general observations thatClegg was relatively young, ‘fresh-faced’, and traditionally handsome, in an agreeable rather than strikingsense, the media conveyed some suspicion of his ‘good-looking’ appeal: “Clegg’s siren call is dangerouslyseductive… So, this evening, keep an eye on that smooth, good-looking guy on the left. He’s verypersuasive” appeared in the Telegraph. As Clegg’s ‘seductive’ charm appeared to ‘work its magic’ with thepublic, a number of commentators questioned both his intentions and the fickle nature of the public’sapproval:Like so many Shirley Valentines, bored by staid, unchanging, grumpy normality and bowledover by a sudden exposure to youth, sunshine and charm, the voters of Britain are conductinga holiday romance with Nick Clegg. (editorial, Mail on Sunday, 18 April 2010)The positioning of Clegg in the ‘holiday romance’ frame is not only dismissive of his popularity; it alsointroduces an element of narrative, a dramatisation of the election via an unconventional source domain.The indeterminate election result and the following phase of coalition talks, which saw Clegg negotiatingalternately with both Cameron and Brown, would disrupt these cosy allusions.When a weekend of coalition talks failed to produce a formal agreement, political commentators turnedhostile towards Clegg and his team of negotiators. Although particularly in evidence in the right-wing press,the shift to characterising Clegg (and the Lib Dem leadership) as ‘tart’ or ‘harlot’ also stemmed from seniorpoliticians, such as Labour MP David Blunkett (“Can you trust the Liberal Democrats? They are behavinglike every harlot in history”), and unnamed Conservatives, who reportedly branded the Lib Dems “a bunch oftarts” (The Sun, 11 May 2010).Once the coalition was formed, the unsavoury ‘tart’ storyline shifted to a ‘bromance’ or gay partnership,bolstered by a joint press conference held in the Downing Street Rose Garden in which Cameron and Cleggprovided the perfect images of informal jocularity more associated with wedding speeches than governmentformation. In one broadcast, This Week used both Frank Sinatra’s ‘Love and Marriage’ and Rolf Harris’ ‘TwoLittle Boys’ to accompany the familiar images As Clegg’s foray into ‘big boys’ politics at the heart ofgovernment continues, his life as (a now rather broken) Pinocchio is ongoing in Martin Rowson’s cartoons,while others have cast him variously as Cameron’s butler, wife or dog.Since then, we have also been able to observe Clegg’s fall from grace, compromised even more thanpoliticians normally are by the realities of his role as the junior partner in a coalition government dominatedby the Conservative party. The student protests of last winter were characterised by expressions of visceralanger, talk of ‘betrayal’ and claims of hypocrisy directed notably toward the Deputy Prime Minister. Cleggwas the effigy of choice, to be burned or hanged during the November protests, while the Twitter-basedcrowd-sourced satire of #nickcleggsfault, which had initially mocked the right-wing press’ smear campaign,had by this point lost all of its ironic attractions. By the time of the AV referendum, exactly a year on from thegeneral election, fellow supporters of the ‘Yes’ campaign asked Clegg to remain in the background, lest hisassociation damage their own standing.The material we have examined offers further evidence of ‘personalisation’ in British politics. This refers tothe shift of emphasis on to the voice, body, personality and private life of the individual politician (especiallythe leader) and away from the policies and ideological differences between parties. At one level, theromantically and sexually themed metaphors to which so many observers were drawn when David Cameronand Nick Clegg undertook to negotiate a coalition government represented an innovative idiom for newtimes, in place of the clichéd deployment of metaphors drawn from war and sporting contests. At anotherlevel, however, this re-imagining of political activities through the idiom of romance was often underscoredwith more familiar patterns of sexism, homophobia and misogyny.Politicians routinely attempt to craft their public and mediated personas, aware of the high price paid for the‘wrong’ kind of visibility in the mediascape, whether that is a perceived lack of authenticity, morality orpolitical judgement. Cartoonists, journalists, comedians, bloggers and citizens can play a part in the co-creation and contestation of such personas. But there is a related question to consider. As the story of NickClegg continues and other politicians perform in the multifaceted glare of a hybridised media environment,will the media penchant for sharp-tongued appraisal, satirical playfulness and distortive caricature of politicalbodies’ work to diminish or enhance democratic openness and public critique of the body politic?This article is a shortened version of full-length article available from British Journal of Politics andInternational Relations.

Nick Clegg’s rise and fall as a celebrity politician highlights the Deputy Prime Minister as a victim of the increasing personification of British politics

Nick Clegg’s rise and fall as a celebrity politician highlights the Deputy Prime Minister as a victim of the increasing personification of British politics

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