A contender for the Lib-Dem leadership today revealed how as a teenager he helped to nurse his mother as she was dying from cancer.
He was caring for his mother Nina, who died aged 44, as his classmates in Nottingham were heading to discos.
Sir Ed said: “You can imagine, everyone was going through the hormones at my all-boys school — they all wanted me to have fun and I was coming back and giving my mother painkillers and taking her on and off commodes.
“When the NHS said they couldn’t do anything more for her she went onto a naturopath cure… I used to have to mash all these carrots and apples and give her these awful juices.”
Sir Ed gets upset describing the indignity of his mother’s last months, spent on a geriatric ward despite her age.
His father John had died of Hodgkin’s disease, leaving Nina to bring up three boys alone.
Sir Ed said their deaths “made me quite strong… Because when you’re young you’re doing things to make your parents happy and I had to realise I had to do it for me.”
He is angry the Conservatives cut the widow’s pension to 18 months, saying “I’ll never ever forgive them for this”.
He also does not believe there is enough data on bereaved children and their educational attainment. His work with the Office for National Statistics shows that in any single classroom, one child will have been bereaved.
Now 53, he describes life with wife Emily and children John, 11, and Ellie, five, as wonderful but is frank about the challenges.
John has a neurological condition which means he cannot walk or talk. Some readjustments — moving house; John now being educated at home — mean he now feels he has the time to be party leader.
He said: “John’s education has improved, my little girl started school, so the combination of all of that has taken off a massive lot of pressure, particularly off my wife.”
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On the future of the Lib Dems, he said: “I feel extraordinarily positive. I think we could be in government again and I think we could be the largest party.”
