{"id":3426,"date":"2018-10-19T13:43:31","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T13:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/facebook-hires-former-deputy-pm-sir-nick-clegg\/"},"modified":"2018-10-19T13:43:31","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T13:43:31","slug":"facebook-hires-former-deputy-pm-sir-nick-clegg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/facebook-hires-former-deputy-pm-sir-nick-clegg\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook hires former deputy PM Sir Nick Clegg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Facebook has hired former deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg as head of its global affairs and communications team.<\/p>\n

The 51-year-old politician was leader of the Liberal Democrats and formed a coalition government with David Cameron and the Conservatives in 2010.<\/p>\n

Facebook has faced intense scrutiny and the threat of government regulation following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and alleged election meddling.<\/p>\n

Several prominent executives have left the company in the last year.<\/p>\n

Mr Clegg’s new job title will be vice-president of global affairs and communications at Facebook. <\/p>\n

He will start work on Monday and will spend a week at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters, before moving to California permanently in the new year.<\/p>\n

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg were personally involved in the recruitment, the Financial Times<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Mr Clegg said he was delighted to join the company.<\/p>\n

“Having spoken at length to Mark and Sheryl over the last few months, I have been struck by their recognition that the company is on a journey which brings new responsibilities not only to the users of Facebook’s apps but to society at large. I hope I will be able to play a role in helping to navigate that journey,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

Mr Clegg has previously written about Facebook for a number of UK newspapers.<\/p>\n

In 2016, he wrote in the Evening Standard<\/a>: “I’m not especially bedazzled by Facebook. While I have good friends who work at the company, I actually find the messianic Californian new-worldy-touchy-feely culture of Facebook a little grating.”<\/p>\n

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What does Facebook want Nick Clegg for?<\/h2>\n

Analysis by Chris Fox, BBC technology reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook has had a turbulent few years and is trying to get a grip on its policies and reputation.<\/p>\n

The Cambridge Analytica data scandal<\/a> revealed that the personal information of millions of people had been misused, potentially influencing the results of elections.<\/p>\n

The company has also removed “billions” of fake accounts, linked to the spread of fake news and disinformation, possibly connected to countries such as Russia and Iran.<\/p>\n

The BBC understands Facebook hopes Mr Clegg will challenge the company on its issues.<\/p>\n

With his political experience as part of the UK government, and as a former MEP, he will also be well-placed to advise how to keep the regulators away.<\/p>\n

In a Facebook post<\/a>, Sheryl Sandberg said the company needed “new perspectives to help us though this time of change”. <\/p>\n

Mr Clegg is not the first Liberal Democrat to take a senior role at Facebook. Lord Allan of Hallam is currently the company’s public policy chief for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n

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Who is Nick Clegg?<\/h2>\n

Nick Clegg was a Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam from 2005 until 2017.<\/p>\n

In 2010, when he was leader of the Liberal Democrats, he became deputy prime minister in a coalition government with the Conservatives.<\/p>\n

But he faced a backlash from his supporters when he broke a promise that he would vote against any rise in university tuition fees.<\/p>\n

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\n Mr Clegg resigned as Liberal Democrat leader in 2015
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The Liberal Democrats lost a majority of their seats in the 2015 general election, ending up with just eight MPs, down from 57.<\/p>\n

Although he had kept his own seat, Mr Clegg resigned as the party leader. <\/p>\n

He lost his seat in the snap general election of 2017.<\/p>\n

In his statement announcing his new job at Facebook, he said it was “wrenching” to “leave the public debate at a crucial time in the Brexit process”.<\/p>\n

“But the key decisions will soon pass to Parliament, of which I am no longer a member, and once I had decided to take up this unique new challenge at Facebook, I felt it was best to get going sooner rather than later,” he said.<\/p>\n

Jon Trickett MP, Labour’s shadow minister for the cabinet office, said Mr Clegg’s new job was “a damning indictment of the sorry state of our country’s politics”.<\/p>\n

“At a time when digital giants such as Facebook are rightly coming under public scrutiny, our former deputy prime minister has been hired to lobby on their behalf.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Image copyright PA Facebook has hired former deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg as head of its global affairs and communications team. The 51-year-old politician was leader of the Liberal Democrats and formed a coalition government with David Cameron and the Conservatives in 2010. Facebook has faced intense scrutiny and the threat of government regulation … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}