Happy new year Nick Clegg. The onetime Deputy Prime Minister has spent much of the past decade collecting oodles of cash from the social media giant formerly known as Facebook. Clegg has served as one of Mark Zuckerberg’s senior executives at Meta since October 2018, living out of a £7 million mansion in Silicon Valley. Talk about a good European eh?
But all good things must come to an end. And today, just months after trumpeting the UK’s Brexit freedoms on AI policy, he has now announced his departure from Meta. Writing, ironically, on rival platform X, Sir Nick wrote a four tweet statement that had all the spontaneity and joy of a hostage video. ‘As a new year begins, I have come to the view that this is the right time for me to move on from my role as President, Global Affairs at Meta’ he wrote stiffly of his ‘adventure of a lifetime.’
He went on to note, with commendable understatement, that ‘my time at the company coincided with a significant resetting of the relationship between “big tech” and the societal pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and norms affecting the sector.’ Well, yes, you could call it that. And in that spirit of change, Sir Nick is – apparently – ‘simply thrilled’ to say that his replacement is going to be Joel Kaplan, his current deputy. Who he, you might ask? Why, none other than George W Bush’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff.
Reports claim that Kaplan was ‘one of the most forceful voices inside Meta against restrictions on political speech, arguing internally that such policies would disproportionately mute conservative voices.’ Convenient timing, perhaps, given that Donald Trump’s inauguration is now just 18 days away. Clearly the market in ex Lib Dem MPs isn’t what it once was…
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