Nick Clegg’s “new Tory” credentials are impeccable. Floppy-haired and well spoken, he was brought up, the son of a banker, in Notting Hill. He went to Westminster then Cambridge and still shares friends with David Cameron and George Osborne. He has young children and a wife who is a lawyer, loves skiing, plays tennis and will not divulge whether he has ever taken drugs. Like William Hague he once worked for Sir Leon Brittan, the former Conservative Cabinet minister.

Even his policies seem more Tory than the Tories’. The Liberal Democrat leader is in favour of a smaller state, he wants tax cuts, he is against ID cards and advocates free schools.

While Paddy Ashdown was infatuated with Tony Blair, Charles Kennedy wooed the liberal Left over Iraq and Sir Menzies Campbell shared flights to Scotland with Gordon Brown, Mr Clegg appears far closer to the Conservative leader. Even though his 50 top target seats at the next election are Labour, he insists he is not Mr Cameron’s clone.

“I am not a Tory,” he says. “They say everything and do nothing. There is a danger for David Cameron that he gives the impression it will all drop into his lap.

“The British public don’t like seeing someone who thinks they are destined to govern but doesn’t know what to do with it. You can’t say there is a broken society and then have no ideas for fixing it.”

Unlike many of those in his party who are gathering in Bournemouth today, however, Mr Clegg defines himself as an economic as well as a social liberal. “In the early Nineties my predecessors said, ‘Spend more on education and the NHS’. Now we are in a different place. People are more sceptical about the ability of government to spend money wisely and there is a recession so we need far more belt tightening. Liberalism is about smaller, more frugal government.”

His plan, which will horrify the Lib Dems’ corduroy jacket brigade, is to cut £20 billion from public spending and hand most of it back in tax cuts. He wants to scrap the Child Trust Fund, take tax credits away from richer families, scrap ID cards and get rid of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. He also proposes to raise £12 billion by taxing capital at the same rate as income, so hedge-fund managers pay more than their cleaners, and forcing top earners to contribute more tax on their pension contributions. “The vast bulk of any money will be handed back in tax cuts,” he tells us.

This is what the Tory grass roots want to hear in two weeks’ time at their conference. But Mr Clegg insists his priorities are different. Liberal Democrat tax cuts would, he says, be targeted at what he describes as “lower and middle income” families. “The Tory tax-cutting agenda has always been top-down, the only tax policy that Cameron and Osborne have unveiled is the inheritance tax proposal that benefits only 6 per cent of the richest in this country. I am saying tax cuts must start from the bottom up.”

The Liberal Democrat leader is attracted by the idea of raising the tax threshold so that the lowest earners pay nothing. “I would dearly like to do that,” he says. “Economically it makes no sense when you are heading into recession to give tax cuts to the better off because they will just save them. You have to give them to people on lower incomes who will transfer them into consumption on food and fuel.”

It is, though, hard to pin him down on who would benefit from his hand-backs. “We are talking about 80 to 90 per cent of taxpayers,” he says.

So will the super-rich pay more under his package? The Liberal Democrats used to believe fervently in a 50p top rate for the wealthiest – but not Mr Clegg. “There is no point in raising new tax bands because it doesn’t raise much money,” he says, “but people who have done well must accept that they have to play on a level playing field. There’s no reason why low-tax payers should be subsidising wealthy people twice as much for their pension contributions.”

Irresponsible bankers should, in his view, be made to pay for their profligacy. “They were greedy and I am loath to see taxpayers bail them out. I believe in entrepreneurialism but we gorged ourselves as an economy on an overleveraged business model which is unsustainable.”

His mentor is Vince Cable, his ballroom-dancing economics spokesman. “When Vince said three years ago that this couldn’t go on, he was laughed out of court by the Tories and denounced by Labour as a grouchy profit of doom. If the Government had heeded those warnings we would be better off now.”

The Liberal Democrat leader has been reviewing his own family finances as a result of the credit crunch, switching from Ocado to Sainsbury’s and replacing his car with a moped.

“I haven’t stopped buying organic but I try to save energy and be more frugal,” he says. “I never spend much on holidays, I go to my inlaws, one of the most unglamorous places in Europe, a dusty little village in Spain. But we are so much more wealthy than the average that I am reluctant to start moaning or holding myself up as an example. It doesn’t matter whether I eat bacon. The priorities are helping other people with their heating bills and staving off repossession.”

Unlike the other two main parties, the Lib Dems are not quietly binning their green policies. “We have to get away from the idea that environmentalism is a middle-class luxury,” their leader says. “Look at fuel poverty, a really radical policy will help the worst-off because poorer families pay much more of their income on fuel.”

Mr Clegg has just announced that his wife, Miriam, is pregnant with their third child – which will add to the cost of their weekly shop. He thinks that families in general need more help from the State. “One of our biggest problems is our lamentable failure to provide affordable childcare.”

Unlike Mr Cameron, he has no desire to encourage marriage in the tax system nor to help mothers who stay at home. He thinks that the majority of women want to return to work after they have a child. “It is often very good for women to have the identity and the self-respect that comes from work. If you can get the balance right it is good for children too. Miriam is very committed to her work and I am proud of that.”

He will not say whether he would ever send his children to private school. “I am not going to make my children the test-tube laboratory case for the kind of politics I believe in. That would be irresponsible as a father.” As a politician, he wants to liberalise the education system so that anyone can set up a school, and give a “pupil premium” to those that teach the poorest children. In an ideal world, he says, “I would get rid of selection in all academies and schools.” If he could start again he would not have grammar schools but he admits: “There is not much point in picking a fight with a hangover from the past.” This sounds more like Labour than the Conservatives but he says that he would never go on holiday with either Mr Brown or Mr Cameron.

If there is a hung Parliament after the next election, Mr Clegg’s ideas might be as relevant as theirs – but he does not want to be an easy catch. “I am not going to stare into a crystal ball with one party a blank space and Labour in implosion and say how I would lean in a hung Parliament.”

He makes clear that he would never compromise on Europe or electoral reform. “I have always been very internationalist by blood and conviction,” he says. “And if there is one thing the Liberal Democrats stand for, it is electoral reform. That would be vital in discussions for a coalition, not just PR. We need a dramatic change in the way money and politics interact; we need a devolution of power.”

His heroine is Joan of Arc, whom he had been discussing at the breakfast table with his two sons. During the interview his six-year-old rang twice to ask for further details of her death. “Don’t worry, darling, she died a long time ago,” he says.

Mr Clegg is not afraid that he will be burnt at the stake at Bournemouth by leftwingers who hate his tax-and-spending plans. “This is not a Clause Four moment. I don’t relish a fight with people for whom I have a great deal of affection and respect and who I grew up with,” he says. “But we have to move with the times.”

Clegg credentials

Born January 7, 1967. His father was a half-Russian banker, his mother a teacher from the Netherlands

Educated Westminster School and Cambridge

Worked After a brief stint as a journalist, he went to the European Commission in 1994. In 1996-99 he was chief of staff to Sir Leon Brittan, the Tory European Commissioner. In 1999 he was elected MEP for East Midlands. In 2005 he became MP for Sheffield Hallam and was elected Liberal Democrat leader in 2007

Family Married to Miriam, a lawyer. Two young sons with another child on the way

Quick fire

North or South? North
Ballet or football? Football
Paella or shepherd’s pie? Paella
Bitter or Budweiser? Bitter
Sun-bathing or skiing? Skiing
Gina Ford or Penelope Leach? Penelope Leach

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