The Moment Nick Clegg Had Power

Until 2025, Nick Clegg has existed in the English mind for several reasons:

• He first came to notice when, as leader of the Liberals in 2010, he stood between Brown and Cameron on television, forcing them to grovel (‘I agree with Nick’), and then bargained with both during the indeterminacy that followed a Hung Parliament.
• He then established himself as Deputy Prime Minister: and was, quite possibly, the least troublesome one there has ever been.
• In the course of this, he aggrieved his followers in the Liberal party by trampling all over one of their major policies: the pledge to oppose tuition fees for higher education.
• I seem to remember he also, at some point, made the mistake of sharing too much information about his frolicsome youth with a journalist.
• Then he went off to work for Facebook, since politicians seem to need something to do, and have much to earn: not being content with the Privy Council and perhaps a Lordship.

You know all this. Even I, in my ignorance, know all this. It is straight from 1066 and All That, i.e., the history we all remember, whether we want to or not. No need to check the facts, as well all know them.

Anyhow, all of this has been knocked into a cocked hat by the latest revelation, that has come along with his latest memoir, How to Save the Internet: The Threat to Global Connection in the Age of AI and Political Conflict. This revelation is that he, Clegg, booted Trump off Facebook.

I am astounded that we never knew this before, or, at least, that it was not part of our 1066 knowledge of Clegg. Anyhow, in the spirit of Augustine/Rousseau-style confession, Clegg has decided to let us know about it. The Guardian has serialised this book. And Gaby Hinsliff interviewed him. I quote at length:

When I ask about his toughest day at Meta, I’m half expecting something like the suicide of 14 year-old Molly Russell, who had been viewing self-harm images on Instagram (the coroner ruled she died “while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content”). But, instead, he picks the “very, very uncomfortable” decision he took to suspend Trump from Facebook in 2021 for incendiary posts during the Capitol Hill riots. “I found that really weighed on me very heavily and still does because, on the one hand, I felt very clearly that the content rules of the company had been violated and, on the other hand… it’s an unelected private company making a decision that affects the public realm. And he was the outgoing President of the world’s most powerful democracy.”

He would still defend the decision, but the precedent set troubles him. “In the end, in a democracy you want democratically accountable figures to thrash it out.”

How about that for power? The most power ever held by Clegg was not when he was Deputy Prime Minister, chillaxing, chatting to Oliver Letwin, conspiring with Danny Alexander and whatnot – nay – it was when he censored, cancelled, pixellated the President of the United States.

Clegg has a strong language of action. He comments on contemporary politics in the UK:

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are “decent people”, he suggests, but maddeningly cautious. “I just wish they took bigger swings. It’s all these endless half measures – a little reform here, a little step towards Europe there, a little placation towards Trump. What they’ll learn, which I learned, is you only have one crack at it.” For all the coalition’s flaws, he says, it was bold. “I remember sitting around a table with Cameron and [George] Osborne saying, ‘Look, this is coalition government, it’s probably not going to last, let’s just go for it.”

Crack at it. Go for it. What in John Stuart Mill’s name is Clegg talking about? Not sure. But certainly it applies to his cancelling of Trump.

And notice, this is the same man who says to Hinsliff:

Anything that empowers people to express themselves, I have a very visceral liberal view that is a good thing. And all the evidence I’ve come across suggests the net effect is very positive.

The liberal finally found something not-to-be-liberal about. What on earth happened? Perhaps someone will write about this in detail. What I find, on cursory examination, is the following:

On January 6th there was the Thing That Happened On The Way To The Capitol. Facebook immediately blocked all approval of the Capitol tourists, by anyone, and on January 7th at 4.36 am blocked Trump for 24 hours; and then, at 8.05 am – presumably ‘going for it’ – banned him “indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks”.

On January 21st Clegg – VP of Global Affairs – posted that Facebook would refer its decision to indefinitely suspend Trump’s access to Facebook and Instagram to the independent Oversight Board. Clegg explained:

Our decision to suspend then-President Trump’s access was taken in extraordinary circumstances: a US President actively fomenting a violent insurrection designed to thwart the peaceful transition of power; five people killed; legislators fleeing the seat of democracy. This has never happened before — and we hope it will never happen again. It was an unprecedented set of events which called for unprecedented action.

He added:

We have taken the view that in open democracies people have a right to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can be held to account. But it has never meant that politicians can say whatever they like.

Notice how Clegg in 2021 added a fourth category to good, bad and ugly, without saying what it was: beyond good, beyond ugly, beyond bad? Yes, a fourth category of the completely politically over-the-edge and beyond-the-pale: namely, Trump.

One day we will look back on these times and wonder about the folly of the liberal political and academic attitude to Trump.

On May 5th 2021 Clegg came again to say that, after only four months, the Oversight Board, established by Facebook to be independent of Facebook, agreed with, er, Facebook. With his relief evident, Clegg wrote: “We’re pleased the board has recognised that the unprecedented circumstances justified the exceptional measure we took.” However, the Board was a bit critical of the unlimited time of the second suspension, so on June 4th Clegg came again to say that the suspension was limited to two years.

With corporate inevitability and well-remunerated gravitas, Clegg – now President of Global Affairs – came again, two years later, on January 25th 2023, to say that Facebook would restore Trump. And one hears the voice of an Englishman in this:

We believe it is both necessary and possible to draw a line between content that is harmful and should be removed, and content that, however distasteful or inaccurate, is part of the rough and tumble of life in a free society.

Rough and tumble. Funny how Clegg’s career at Facebook echoed Trump’s rise and fall and rise. Clegg rose as Trump fell. The Vice President of Global Affairs booted out Trump after Trump was no longer President, and was promoted to become ‘President of Global Affairs’ himself (Clegg up / Trump down), but then allowed Trump back on Facebook etc. just as Trump again became the Republican nominee, and then Clegg left Meta as ‘President of Global Affairs’ just as Trump became President of, well, actual Global Affairs again (Trump up / Clegg down).

The excerpt from his book printed in the Guardian suggests that the audiobook could be used instead of The Rest is Politics or the Korok Forest music from Breath of the Wild to fall asleep to. Here are some highlights:

Politics, at its heart, is a competition between different stories about how things should be.

Silicon Valley is full of people who see the world a different way: engineers. Theirs is a world of facts and process. The engineer’s mindset is to identify a problem and fix it, then move on to the next problem.

I don’t know. I could turn this into something like a thought, if I opposed these two things, but Clegg leaves the sleepy reader to do the work for him. (If politics is about rival stories, and engineering is about solving problems, then, Nick, ain’t there a complete disjunct between politics and engineering?) But he prefers to treat all of this in a nuanced way. Nuance: which apes thinking, or alludes to it, without actually doing it. Nuance: always a way of avoiding clarity. So he falls back on Guardian-ready platitudes about tech bros, masculinity, conformity etc. The engineers “seem tone deaf” to the public, etc. Aye, thanks. Clegg compares competitive politicians and competitive Siliconers, but does so without noticing that from his own account he is talking about different types of competition.

Shall we read his book? Do we think Clegg knows anything about how to save the internet? The New Scientist says the book is dull. If the New Scientist thinks it is dull, it must be very dull. Still, at least, as we refuse to read his book, we can happily reflect on the moment when Clegg was not dull at all: the moment when he acted decisively with his fragment of absolute power.