Exclusive: I tried to recruit Nick Clegg for the Tories, says former MP

Lord Brittan, the former Tory MP for Richmond who gave Mr Clegg a job in Brussels when he was European Commissioner, told the Yorkshire Post he has been taken aback by the Lib Dem leader's surge in the opinion polls since last week's first televised leaders' debate.

The former Cabinet Minister revealed that when Mr Clegg had decided to enter politics in the 1990s and raised concerns the Tories were too eurosceptic he urged him to sign up and change the party, but was unsuccessful.

After another impressive performance in this week's second debate Mr Clegg is hopeful of smashing through the two-party system, to the surprise of many, including Lord Brittan.

"I thought he'd do well and he would make the Liberal Democrat party influential, but it never occurred to me he would do more than that," he said.

Lord Brittan, who quit as MP in 1995 to become a European Commissioner, has remained close friends with Mr Clegg since employing him in Brussels, but refused to say whether they had spoken during the campaign.

Mr Clegg later joined the Lib Dems and became MEP for the East Midlands before becoming MP for Sheffield Hallam in 2005.

In the wake of his surging support, Lord Brittan revealed he had been "immediately struck" by Mr Clegg when they first met.

"I was a Conservative, I knew his family background was not violently anti-Conservative to put it mildly," he said. "I naturally wanted him both to go into politics and go into Conservative politics.

He felt in regards to the European question the Conservative party was a party he didn't want to be associated with."

Lord Brittan said he told Mr Clegg he wasn't "wildly" taken with the party's European stance either but said "if you and a handful of bright young people with determined and strong views join, the party can

change". Lord Brittan said: "I'd said to him one of the reasons ... he should become a Conservative despite his reservations was did he want to be in a party of influence or a party of power, because at that stage it looked as if the Liberal Democrats could never be more than influence?

"There was nothing dishonourable or unworthy about joining a party of influence but there's a clear distinction between that and running

the show in a party of power."

Asked whether Mr Clegg's rise had caught him off guard, Lord Brittan said: "I'm not surprised he's done well but I didn't think he'd jump so far so fast.

"I didn't anticipate – alongside most other people – that the television debate format would make such a huge impact."