I would like to thank all Liberal Democrat members whose support led to my election yesterday as Party Leader.  Now is the time for our party to come together to work for a more liberal Britain. Politics is out of step with the liberal instincts of the British people: we must change that.

When I look at Britain today I see a country stifled by the policies of successive illiberal governments - both Labour and Conservative.  Our civil liberties have been casually cast aside, our public services are run by giant, faceless and often incompetent government bureaucracies, and our poorest communities suffer with security and opportunity in short supply.  Britain is a rich society full of ambitious people with energy and drive, but where families nonetheless struggle to meet their monthly bills and achieve a good balance between the demands of work and family time.

I am determined that our party will point the way to a better future for Britain: the liberal country that the British people want it to be.  We can do that by trusting the citizen, taking radical action, and ending the stifling grip of the two-party system.

I want to open up my party, Westminster, and British politics as a whole.  I intend to hold regular and public Town Hall Meetings, and to spend at least one day every week listening and campaigning outside Westminster, reaching out and engaging with families and individuals throughout Britain who feel disconnected from politics.

I started that process today. Read more »

Like everyone, I owe a great debt of gratitude to our NHS. But these days it is struggling - with budget cuts, ward closures and superbugs. People are struggling, too - with cancelled operations, complex bureaucracy, and little sense of control over their own health.

I want an NHS ordinary people take charge of. But during the campaign, lots of people have been asking me exactly what that will mean. So here goes.

First, of course, I will devolve to locally elected people the power to develop the health service their community needs – not the health service Whitehall wants them to have. Local accountability of our health service is a vital first step in breaking it down, to human scale, and making it responsive. But it won’t be enough.

We need to put power back in the hands of nurses, doctors and everyone else who works at the sharp end in our health service – and into the hands of patients, too.

I want to see a bonfire of central targets. But that mustn’t for a second compromise the standards of people’s care. I want British citizens to have a charter of health rights – like citizens of Denmark do – a declaration of what everyone is entitled to. That should include a maximum waiting time, the right to information and confidential advice, the right to a GP and out of hours care and much more.

And we need to give people control over their health every day – not just on polling day. The vastness of the NHS is bewildering. It feels like the system’s in charge, not the people.

That must change. There’s an inspirational project called InControl, where patients in need of long-term social and health care get their own budget, and freedom to spend it how they like. So instead of having carers or therapists allocated by a faceless bureaucrat, they pick and choose what suits them – designing the care they need, instead of getting the care the system says they can have.

These pilot projects show satisfaction goes up, and costs go down, when people are given control in this way.

By putting all people, not just the privileged, in charge of their health care, by making sure they know and can get what they’re entitled to, we can end the unacceptable health inequalities in this country. I’m horrified that a child born in the poorest part of Sheffield, where I’m an MP, will live a full 14 years less than a child born in the wealthiest part.

I will lead the Liberal Democrats to be the champions of the NHS. I will stand up for small hospitals and local clinics and the people who work there. We will not be the defenders of the status quo, but rather believers in giving people the right they deserve to take control of their own health.

I will make the NHS human in scale and responsive to local needs. I want it to become, above all, a People’s Health Service.

Another extremely busy - but very exciting - week.

On Monday, children, parents and teachers from an excellent local school, Dobcroft, came to visit. The trip - for the kids at least - finished with a dusk flight on the London Eye and pizza on the way home, while I went to a local cafe to brief journalists on my plans for primary education and childcare.

On Tuesday, I went up to Luton to see the fascinating Marsh Farm Estate project - a real vision of community empowerment - and then dashed back to London where Chris and I took on Jeremy Paxman on BBC2’s Newsnight.

The Independent published an article from me on reforming politics on Wednesday. As I explain in the article, if Parliament is to avoid being turned from the mother of all parliaments into the eunuch of all parliaments, we need a proper overhaul of Westminster.

On to Thursday - when the Guardian followed suit, publishing an article from me on individual and community empowerment. It sets out my approach to real devolution of our public services - and you can read it here. We did an online hustings at the University of Westminster’s new training TV studio, and then both rushed to the Institute of Public Policy Research for a session on marriage and the family.

I’m fed up that the language of family is always captured by social conservatives. But it isn’t just right wingers who care about family - like it isn’t just right wingers who care about crime. As leader of our party, I’d reclaim this ground for liberals: because family is universal, it isn’t about moralising, and imposing a one-size-fits-all life. You can read the whole speech I made here.

Yesterday, Friday, started with a round of early morning radio interviews. Unusually, I then had a couple of hours free - so Miriam and I went on a long walk in Richmond park in fantastic winter sunshine before I went on to Ed Davey’s constituency, round the corner in Kingston and Surbiton. Ed’s waiting on tenderhooks as his wife, Emily, is due to give birth to their first child any day now - a good reminder that there are more important things than politics.

In the afternoon I was back at Westminster for a few more press interviews before catching a train to Colchester to record Any Questions with Ed Stourton. Listen again here.

And just in case you thought that wasn’t enough, this morning I’m off to Manchester for a hustings, then down to Nick Harvey’s annual dinner in North Devon.

I hope to see some of you along the way!

Nick Clegg

Liberal Democrat Voice has asked both leadership candidates to list the five books that have most influenced their political views, along with an explanation for their choice. Chris Huhne’s piece will appear later today.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a home filled with books. They’re a huge part of my life and shaped so much of how I think and feel. But if I’m honest, the biggest political influence in my life wasn’t Mill, Rawls or Berlin, however much I respect and admire them. I became a liberal not in a library, but over the dinner table, in the car, in the park – in conversation with my mum.

My mum spent her early childhood in a prisoner of war camp. Her stories, and those of my father’s mother, who fled the Russian revolution, formed in me an understanding even as a tiny child that freedom matters. And I hope I’ve inherited some of my mum’s unerring compassion, her ability to see potential in everyone, her despair at the class system, and her total belief in justice.

But top of my booklist are:

J. M. Coetzee: Life and Times of Michael K
Coetzee, in my view, is one of the greatest - if also most harrowing - of writers alive today. This book is an unsentimental look at how one individual shunned the violence and politics of a society in turmoil, and kept his dignity throughout.

Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea
One of the most powerful books I have ever read. Though short, it casts an uncompromising light on gender inequality and the long road towards the emancipation of women. Her rewriting of the mad Mrs Rochester is one of the great radical subversions in British literature.
 
J.S.Mill: On Liberty
For me, Mill’s the cornerstone of a remarkable tradition of liberal British political thought. There are lots of seminal texts for liberals, all of which have been important to me – Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, and Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty for starters. But Mill pips them to the post.

George Orwell: Animal Farm
There’s no more powerful exhortation of the way the best intentions can be corrupted by tyranny than Animal Farm. Orwell was a powerful visionary, and I also find myself referring to 1984 in my work on the surveillance state far more than I wish I needed to.

Carl Sagan: Pale Blue Dot
I can do no better than quote Sagan, in his response to that picture of the tiny vulnerable world, as seen from outer space. “It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”