The Problem with Facebook’s ‘Supreme Court’
15th March 2021
He might now be one of the most powerful men in global media, but I find whenever I see a photograph of former British deputy PM Nick Clegg, Orwell’s quote about everyone getting the face they deserve by 50 comes to mind.
Now 54, the remnants of the boyish idealist are still just about there, but the eyes to me are ledgers of too much unhappy compromise — deadened, I always assume, by the principles he felt forced by David Cameron to sacrifice for personal advancement, and by the amazing decision to see out the remaining years of a career spent failing upwards as Mark Zuckerberg’s lavishly remunerated PR lickspittle.
For a decade and more, Clegg positioned himself as the good guy of British politics — radiating sixth-form actor star power at every opportunity. Now he spins for Facebook, a mega-corporation that in the UK last year paid £28 million ($38.9 million) of tax on revenues of £1.6 billion ($2.2 billion), and whose CEO, Zuckerberg, still flatly refuses to present himself for scrutiny by the UK Parliament on issues that include data harvesting.