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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/04/nick-clegg-betrayed-public-now-failing-upwards-at-facebook-tuition-fees-social-media-apologising
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Nick Clegg betrayed the public – and now he’s failing upwards at Facebook | Nick Clegg betrayed the public – and now he’s failing upwards at Facebook |
(about 1 hour later) | |
No amount of Auto-Tuned apologies will make me forgive Nick Clegg. Ever since he shone in televised electoral debates by remembering audience members’ names, this trick is used by every snake-oil salesman on the planet. I do not want earnest young men in Currys or on my doorstep calling me Susan. And this is but one of his legacies. Nick “I-could-a-been-a-contender” Clegg actually was a contender. This is mind-warping. He was, as my youngest said, “like 1% prime minister or something?” He was in fact deputy prime minister, and we are meant to be grateful to him for curbing the worst excesses of the Tories. | |
No one is, though. In spite of fine speeches about liberal values, no one cares about Nick’s views now, do they? He betrayed the public and his core vote in student towns on tuition fees. The Liberal Democrat compromise on proportional representation meant that a crucial argument on electoral reform was never made. Under his leadership the Lib Dems went from a party of 57 MPs to eight. Clegg had been told that to act as a power in a coalition government, he would need to deliver specifically in certain ministries. Instead, he insisted on a Lib Dem presence across the board. It failed. | |
Lately, I’ve heard a lot of people talking about wanting a pro-remain liberal party and I wonder whatever happened to our political memory. Then up pops Clegg on my radio. And I start to wonder where the buck stops … | |
If I were a key Europhile, maybe I would want to get the hell out and have a quiet life. Clegg, en famille, is installed in a £7m mansion in Menlo Park – “the most expensive zip code” in the US, according to Forbes. Up the road is Facebook HQ because Clegg’s new job is working with Mark Zuckerberg. The need to regulate Facebook has never been greater because of the piling up of allegations around selling data, data mining by Cambridge Analytica and children viewing images of self-harm. Who better then to tell us to trust it’s all going to work out than someone who appears to fail at higher and higher levels of income? It’s utterly incredible that, in his first speech in Brussels for Facebook, Clegg should make self-righteous speeches about “election integrity” and setting up a centre in Dublin to stop fake news and misinformation. He also defended Facebook’s advertising model. This amounts to the usual “check your settings” advice. | |
Seriously? There are many complicated reasons that people distrust politicians. And then there is Nick Clegg. People are not entirely stupid. Most of us have jobs in which the result of repeated failure is not promotion. But here we see the consequences of letting others down, not delivering and being devoid of core principles: being rewarded at the top of the tree. | |
Clegg’s job is now full-time contrition, for which he is handsomely paid. But it is also to resist the demands that Zuckerberg’s empire be subject to regulation, to defend what Facebook does with our data and insist its advertising is responsible. He acknowledges that Facebook has made mistakes, but says now it is in an entirely new phase of “reform, responsibility and change”. | |
Well, Nick, let’s talk about responsibility. At what point, when you have had a career in public life, do you go away and retrain as something socially useful? Walk the walk as well as talk the talk? Instead of saying sorry, show it. The demand that Facebook be more accountable is now being met instead by a man who will apologise for everything, but is accountable for none of it. Sorry really is not good enough. | |
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