Tag: Nick Clegg

Much has been made of the need for Jeremy Corbyn to listen to pro-Brexit voters in Labour’s northern heartlands. Among the activists was Ryan Simms, 26, who works in procurement for the NHS in Leeds and has been a Labour supporter for six years – but only joined the party after Corbyn became leader. “Corbyn wants an election, but it’ll be one where we have the choice between a Tory Brexit deal and some magical unicorn Brexit deal promised by Labour,” Roberts said. She usually supports Labour, but next time she’ll vote Green unless Corbyn backs a people’s vote. More young activists were out demonstrating in areas including Bristol, Leicester, Warwick, York and Edinburgh. “He can enable a Tory Brexit or back a public vote. The large majority of Labour members want a public vote, with 88% saying they would vote to stay in the EU if there was a public vote.” Imagine the proportion of young Labour members who want to stay – 90, 95%? Of the 1.6 million young people who have joined the electorate since 2016, who say they are certain to vote in a future EU referendum, 87% would vote to stay in the EU. “We beat the expectations of the establishment in 2017 because they didn’t pick up my generation’s appetite and enthusiasm for change. But that was when a better Brexit deal was possible, and two years before exit day.

What do you do after you’ve been the deputy prime minister to the United Kingdom? Historically, the answer is usually “retire” or “become prime minister.” For Nick Clegg, former leader of the Liberal Democrats and deputy prime minister between 2010 and 2015 under David Cameron, the answer is “move to Palo Alto, California, to work for Facebook.” “Instead of the gothic splendour of Westminster, I will be surrounded by the gleaming glass and steel of Silicon Valley,” he wrote in a Guardian op-ed officially announcing his new position on Friday. The idea being that, say, a Facebook executive is more powerful than, say, a deputy prime minister — a sentiment that isn’t wrong, exactly, but doesn’t quite get at the exact relationship between government and the tech industry. It’s also a reflection of their political principles, and those of the companies they turn to. The ideology of Clegg’s Liberal Democrats — centering around the economic liberalism of free trade, free markets, and the free movement of people — has fallen deeply out of favor in electoral politics in the U.K., as it has in most of the rest of the world, but it’s still the main political current in Silicon Valley — and at Facebook especially. Why waste your time on the unreceptive world of electoral politics when platform politics welcomes you with open arms? Clegg is known best for his, let’s say, transformative leadership of the Liberal Democrats. In 2016, he campaigned loudly against Brexit (we know how that one went); last year, he lost the election for his own seat to the Labour Party candidate. In that sense Clegg isn’t leaving politics for tech so much as exchanging one form of politics — the ballot box — for another — the platform. But if there’s one thing Clegg has made clear, it’s that he’s willing to compromise if he sees a clear benefit.

I have mixed feelings about leaving the UK’s public debate about the future of our country’s relations with the rest of Europe. But I will no longer seek to play a public role in that debate myself. Profile Nick Clegg's political highs and lows Nick Clegg: political highs and lows Even though Nick Clegg spent five years as deputy prime minister, his probable political highlight came about a month before he took the post, in the unlikely arena of the pre-election party leaders’ debate of April 2016. After the election, the Lib Dems had 57 MPs – enough to gain a share in government with Cameron’s Conservatives and get Clegg an office adjoining Downing Street. It was a rapid fall for a man who ended up spending just 12 years in the Commons, becoming Lib Dem leader little more than two years after becoming an MP, following his work at the European commission and five years as an MEP. I do not arrive in Silicon Valley with a monopoly of wisdom on these crucial questions, but I have been impressed in my numerous conversations with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg in recent months by the seriousness with which they recognise the profound responsibilities that Facebook has – not only to its vast number of users but to society at large. As concerns about the impact of technology grow, the left has tended to condemn “big tech” as representative of everything that is wrong in an unleashed market economy. We cannot wish away technological progress. The worlds of politics and tech too often speak past each other. •Nick Clegg is a former UK deputy prime minister and former leader of the Liberal Democrats

Discuss!”, Nick Clegg declares jauntily at the start of the first episode of his new podcast, Anger Management. The former Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister can now be heard on the internet airwaves fortnightly, grilling guests about what he calls “the politics of anger”. Jacob Rees-Mogg, too, has a fortnightly podcast called the Moggcast, which launched in January 2018 and is hosted by Conservative Home. Where once a politician might do a phone-in show on LBC or guest host The Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 to show how in touch and relatable they are (as in Call Clegg, which aired on LBC from 2013 to 2015, or Ed Miliband’s lunch time death metal scream), they can now go it alone. There’s no need to put up with John Humphrys or work with the BBC’s requirement for political balance. His first guest is former Ukip leader Nigel Farage (coincidentally also the host of a podcast called Farage Against the Machine). It’s a slightly odd choice of guest to launch the show — made, no doubt, to generate controversy and a higher iTunes chart position — and it doesn’t exactly show Clegg’s broadcasting skills in a good light. It would take someone substantially more skilled behind the microphone than Clegg to completely reinvent the one-on-one discussion format in a single episode. They’re not journalists, and they don’t often have a good nose for what makes a strong show for the listener, or take the advice of those who do. Otherwise, like Nick Clegg, they will end up telling Nigel Farage that he’s “very good at the high horse stuff about how the EU is ghastly” in a strained tone of voice.