{"id":366603,"date":"2025-08-23T06:54:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T06:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/366603\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T06:54:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T06:54:11","slug":"if-the-people-who-ran-facebook-were-monsters-i-wouldnt-have-worked-there-nick-clegg-on-tech-bros-trump-and-leaving-silicon-valley-nick-clegg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/366603\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018If the people who ran Facebook were monsters, I wouldn\u2019t have worked there\u2019: Nick Clegg on tech bros, Trump and leaving Silicon Valley | Nick Clegg"},"content":{"rendered":"

The rain is just starting to fall from a grey London sky as Sir Nick Clegg<\/a> arrives, ducking through the traffic and carrying what looks like his laundry. Clean shirts for the photoshoot, he says, before apologetically wondering if he might possibly get a coffee. Within minutes he has further apologised for wanting to swap the leather club chair he is offered for a hard plastic one; and then, in horror, for any impression inadvertently given that my questions might send him to sleep.<\/p>\n

Impeccable English manners should never be mistaken for diffidence \u2013 at 58, Clegg remains the only British political figure who could convincingly be played by the equally posh but self-effacing Colin Firth, whose old London home Clegg recently bought \u2013 but there are backbench nobodies more grandly self-important than the former deputy prime minister who became number two at the tech giant Meta. Which may be just as well, given rumours that his next supporting role may be to his lawyer wife Miriam Gonz\u00e1lez Dur\u00e1ntez\u2019s nascent political career in Spain. It turns out she \u201cnever really settled\u201d in the land of the billionaire tech bro, one of many reasons the couple swapped poolside life in Palo Alto, California, for London almost three years before he left Meta, which owns and operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. \u201cShe\u2019s fomenting insurrection in Spain now,\u201d Clegg says of Espa\u00f1a Mejor<\/a>, her non-profit aimed at bringing citizens into policymaking.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost as if the marital tables have turned. \u201cYeah, well, she\u2019d be a much better politician than I,\u201d he laughs. A week later, rumours surface that Gonz\u00e1lez Dur\u00e1ntez might consider leading a new Spanish liberal party.<\/p>\n

If Clegg ever needed to fade gracefully into his wife\u2019s political shadow, as Bill Clinton did for Hillary, I suspect he\u2019d be comfortable with that. He has done 15 tough years on the frontline: first as the Liberal Democrat leader in a Conservative-led coalition government, often defending or apologising for the compromises that accompany power; followed by something not dissimilar but better paid as president of global affairs at Meta<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Are reports that he earned \u00a3100m in salary and stock options over seven years in Silicon Valley<\/a> true? \u201cI\u2019m sure they\u2019re wrong, but I haven\u2019t put the \u2026 \u201d He wriggles. \u201cI was paid extremely well. I feel extremely fortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Either way, perhaps what his critics most want to know is whether he really was committed to the cause, or sold out to big tech for the money. \u201cI\u2019m afraid the truth is worse than they imagine,\u201d he says genially. \u201cI really do believe that, despite its imperfections, social media has allowed billions of people \u2013 especially billions of people who often cultural elites like us in the developed world don\u2019t think about, across Africa, Latin America, Asia \u2013 to communicate with each other in a way that has never happened before.\u201d<\/p>\n

So this great human experiment in bringing a billion people into each other\u2019s homes was worth it? \u201cAnything that empowers people to express themselves, I have a very visceral liberal view that is a good thing. And all the evidence I\u2019ve come across suggests the net effect is very positive.\u201d It\u2019s what comes next that concerns him. His new book, How to Save the Internet, warns of the dangers posed to a free and open global internet by an age of autocrats and a titanic power struggle over AI.<\/p>\n

Clegg announced his departure from Meta just weeks before all the tech titans \u2013 Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, his own former boss Mark Zuckerberg \u2013 were photographed lining up obediently at Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration<\/a>. The timing was no coincidence: Clegg expected Trump to win, but hadn\u2019t foreseen \u201cquite the alacrity with which the whole of Silicon Valley was going to move from what it was when I moved there, which was wary of politics, to seeking to be joined at the hip with the new administration\u201d. Having long argued for Meta to stay out of politics, evidently that was Clegg\u2019s red line.<\/p>\n

Still, he insists his exit was \u201cvery civilised\u201d. He won\u2019t criticise the measures announced days after he left \u2013 including replacing professional factcheckers on Facebook and Instagram<\/a> with a Wikipedia-style system of users correcting misinformation, plus loosening the constraints around posting on hot topics such as immigration or gender \u2013 to reduce what Zuckerberg called \u201ccensorship mistakes\u201d. A course correction, Clegg insists, was not illogical. \u201cI think it was reasonable to say, particularly around the time of the pandemic, that we slightly overdid it. Most of the time I was there, the pressure from government and, dare I say it, from papers like the Guardian, was always \u2018take down\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Silicon Valley, everyone wears the same clothes, drives the same cars, listens to the same podcasts. It\u2019s herd-like behaviour<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But did he agree with Zuckerberg telling the manosphere-friendly Joe Rogan podcast the same week that corporate life needed more \u201cmasculine energy\u201d, and a culture that \u201ccelebrates the aggression a bit more\u201d? There is a pause. \u201cIt\u2019s not really me,\u201d he says flatly. \u201cI don\u2019t really know what to say about that.\u201d Well, he could just say what he thinks?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I think about all the problems of society, I don\u2019t think the one thing we need is more masculinity,\u201d he begins slowly, then suddenly he\u2019s off, at an increasingly indignant gallop. \u201cYou\u2019d think, wouldn\u2019t you, that if you were immensely powerful and rich like Elon Musk and all these other tech bros and members of that podcast community, that you\u2019d reflect on your good fortune compared with most other people?<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the interesting thing.\u201d His tone grows more scathing. <\/strong>\u201cIn Silicon Valley, far from thinking they\u2019re lucky, they think they\u2019re hard done by, they\u2019re victims. I couldn\u2019t, and still can\u2019t, understand this deeply unattractive combination of machismo and self-pity.\u201d<\/p>\n

He insists he\u2019s not directing any of this against Zuckerberg personally. \u201cAnd please don\u2019t portray it as such \u2013 it is a cultural thing, from Elon Musk\u2019s chainsaw-wielding stuff to any Silicon Valley podcast. If you\u2019re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time the concept of recognising your own privilege enters our conversation \u2013 Clegg jokes that returning to London helped avoid the youngest of their three sons, 16-year-old Miguel, growing up \u201ca spoilt Silicon Valley brat\u201d \u2013 but it seems the most heartfelt, for reasons perhaps rooted in his own childhood.<\/p>\n

Nick Clegg was born in Buckinghamshire, the third of four children of a half-English, half-Russian banker father and a Dutch mother who as a child survived internment and near-starvation in a brutal Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. Those early experiences left their mark: Clegg and his three siblings, though privately educated, were raised not to take their gilded lives for granted and never to waste food.<\/p>\n

Of the three bubbles in which he admits to spending his working life \u2013 Brussels as an MEP, then Westminster as an MP and finally Silicon Valley \u2013 Clegg found Westminster \u201cthe most insufferable, partly just because of the living on past glories and the pomposity of it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Charismatic and smart, he was tipped for the leadership before he even arrived in parliament in 2005. But even he seemed faintly disconcerted by Cleggmania<\/a>, that feverish period in 2010 when voters unconvinced by Gordon Brown or David Cameron decided that they, too \u2013 in what became the catchphrase of the first-ever televised election debate \u2013 agreed with Nick<\/a>. <\/strong>In hindsight, Cleggmania foreshadowed a much angrier strain of populist revolt against the mainstream to come.<\/p>\n

But it could not survive him joining Cameron in coalition. The Lib Dems won battles \u2013 over free school lunches and tax cuts for the low-paid \u2013 but never recovered from having to defend benefit cuts and renege on their pledge to scrap tuition fees. After their crushing defeat in the 2015 election, Clegg could only watch from opposition as Cameron called and lost a Brexit referendum that still enrages him. (Whenever his former partner is mentioned, he noticeably stiffens: when I say I\u2019d heard Cameron envied his fancy job and fresh start in California, his only response is a clipped, \u201cI can\u2019t comment on how other people feel.\u201d) He is convinced Britain will rejoin the EU within his lifetime, and if he ever saw that debate resuming, \u201cI\u2019d drop everything \u2013 whether to stuff envelopes or man the barricades.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2017, Clegg lost his seat to an underwhelming Labour candidate later jailed for fraud. But it wasn\u2019t the worst thing to happen that year; in the autumn the couple disclosed that their then 15-year-old eldest son Antonio had undergone treatment for cancer<\/a>. (Now thankfully recovered, Antonio and his younger brother Alberto have stayed in the US for university and work.) Coincidentally, that summer the family had holidayed in California to celebrate the end of Antonio\u2019s chemotherapy, which meant when the then Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg approached Clegg about a job in 2018, \u201cwe could say to the boys, \u2018Do you want to go back and live in the place we\u2019ve just holidayed in?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

With the then British prime minster David Cameron en route to a coalition cabinet meeting in January 2012 \u2026 Photograph: WPA\/Getty Images\u2026 and with his wife, Miriam Gonz\u00e1lez Dur\u00e1ntez, at the Liberal Democrat autumn conference in October 2014. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The idea of starting over in sunny, can-do California clearly beat \u201ctrying to relitigate the battles of the past\u201d back home. Yet it meant leaping from the frying pan into the fire of a company accused of swinging the 2016 election for Trump<\/a>, ruining teenagers\u2019 mental health and failing to stop its platform in Myanmar being used to help incite violence against the Rohingya minority<\/a>, in which thousands died and more than 700,000 fled.<\/p>\n

Clegg insists he wouldn\u2019t have joined the company if he wasn\u2019t convinced Facebook<\/a> wanted to change. But, crucially, <\/strong>he also has the unwavering commitment to free speech \u2013 even if what is said is offensive \u2013 of a liberal raised in pre-internet times. He fought pitched battles in government with then home secretary Theresa May over online state snooping, and is uncomfortable now to read of British police making 30 arrests a day for allegedly offensive social media posts.<\/p>\n

It clearly rankles that the case for free speech is argued loudest now not by liberals but by Reform leader Nigel Farage \u2013 who recently criticised the introduction of age verification on social media sites, meant to stop children seeing legal but harmful content such as pornography \u2013 and US vice-president JD Vance. \u201cThere is nothing I find more stomach-churning than the brazen hypocrisy of Trump administration members flying first-class over to Europe and pontificating about being the great defenders of free expression, when they then fly back to intimidate and bully their opponents,\u201d Clegg says. It\u2019s in the US, not Europe, he notes, that foreign students cleanse their social media feeds to avoid deportation. Yet he warns that if crackdowns on so-called online harms \u2013 odious but not illegal material \u2013 become all-encompassing, they will be politically exploited. \u201cThe Farages of this world will get more of a hearing the more imprecise these boundaries are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite his libertarian instincts, Silicon Valley was a culture shock. <\/strong>In an industry obsessed with Chinese rivals, Europe barely figured (the only British issue people asked about was Harry and Meghan, a subject he views with \u201cshoulder-shrugging indifference\u201d). And though his book is in parts very funny \u2013 Musk beaming into an AI summit via video link from his private jet like \u201ca hostage video shot on the Death Star\u201d; then culture secretary Nadine Dorries demanding he take down a controversial tweet, seemingly unaware Meta doesn\u2019t own Twitter (now X) \u2013 Clegg soon learned not to make jokes at work, after one ice-breaker about not bringing your \u201cauthentic self\u201d to the office elicited stony silence.<\/p>\n

Though he loved exploring the great outdoors with his sons, he found Silicon Valley \u201ccloyingly conformist\u201d, despite its claims to radical disruption. \u201cEveryone wears the same clothes, drives the same cars, listens to the same podcasts, follows the same fads. It\u2019s a place born of immense sort of herd-like behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even as an outsider, Clegg still sees tech as a force for good. His book was conceived as a plea to preserve the open flow of information and money across borders, in a time of drawbridges being yanked up. But it also confronts claims that social media has made us angrier, dumber and sadder, chiefly by arguing, in true centrist dad style, that it\u2019s actually more complicated than that. \u201cYou don\u2019t just switch your phone on, scroll, then suddenly something happens to your neural pathways to make you think and feel things you never did before.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wish Keir\u00a0Starmer and Rachel Reeves took\u00a0 \u00a0bigger swings. What they\u2019ll learn, which I learned, is you only have one crack at it<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The evidence linking social media use with children\u2019s mental health is weaker than often suggested, he argues, with some troubled teenagers finding comfort online; but he acknowledges it\u2019s not always the case for vulnerable people. In 2021 a whistleblower leaked internal Instagram research<\/a> suggesting a worrying number of girls already struggling with issues such as body image reported that using social media made the difficult times worse.<\/p>\n

Clegg doesn\u2019t disagree with calls for new age limits on children\u2019s social media use. \u201cI cannot think of a better decision that should be taken by parliaments, not by tech bros.\u201d He thinks 13- to 16-year-olds should have separate social media, with age restrictions enforced via app stores when children first set up their phones.<\/p>\n

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Similarly he argues in the book that affective polarisation \u2013 hostility to people with different political views \u2013 started rising in the US before mass use of social media, and even fell in some countries as social media use increased. Does he think the sway it holds over politics now is more or less unhealthy than that wielded by old media kingpins such as Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre? \u201cI think it\u2019s way more unhealthy in the hands of people like Dacre because he\u2019s famous for just kneecapping people he doesn\u2019t like for political ends. No tech bro is going to do that, because the people who run the platforms, they don\u2019t generate the content.\u201d<\/p>\n

His arguments are made with the fluency of someone who has been delivering them professionally for years, and he\u2019s right that cause and effect isn\u2019t easily proven here. But is he really claiming social media has nothing to do with the rise of Trump, Reform or violent flashpoints such as last year\u2019s Southport riots (partly fuelled by posts wrongly describing the killer as an illegal immigrant)?<\/p>\n

He does concede that virality is new and can, as seen in Myanmar, \u201ccreate new perils. Does it mean the anger of the mob is invented by social media? Of course not. Pol Pot, the 1930s, the pogroms \u2013 all of these things happened well before social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if, as he argues, it wasn\u2019t social media, then what did leave Britain so \u201cknackered and sullen and out of puff\u201d? Clegg blames the \u201cnear-death experience\u201d of the 2008 banking crash, followed by what some would call his government\u2019s crippling austerity measures, then Brexit and a \u201cchronic wasted decade\u201d of political paralysis. \u201cI remember so vividly in 2015 thinking, oh, finally. People\u2019s earnings started rising above prices in 2015 after years of this bone-crushing pressure on wages. And it literally flipped overnight in 2016.\u201d<\/p>\n

The one time he seems genuinely flustered is when asked about Careless People<\/a>, a memoir by ex-Meta executive Sarah Wynn-Williams<\/a> \u2013 who left the year before he joined \u2013 painting a picture of toxic tech bros out of control. Meta, which initially sought an injunction preventing the author promoting it, insists the book contains \u201cdefamatory and untrue allegations\u201d.<\/p>\n

Wynn-Williams claims she was asked by Sandberg to join her in bed on board the corporate private jet. Did Clegg witness anything like that? \u201cNo. I haven\u2019t read it for very good reasons. You\u2019ll have to ask her why she wrote it eight years after she left, I\u2019m writing mine eight months after announcing leaving Meta.\u201d<\/p>\n

But you needn\u2019t have read it to answer the question? \u201cThey\u2019re instances in time when I wasn\u2019t there. I didn\u2019t see any of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wynn-Williams also accuses her boss, Joel Kaplan \u2013 later Clegg\u2019s deputy, now his successor \u2013 of sexually harassing her. (Meta calls this \u201cmisleading and unfounded\u201d, saying an internal investigation cleared Kaplan, and Wynn-Williams was fired for \u201cpoor performance and toxic behaviour\u201d.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know anything about those subjects,\u201d Clegg says. \u201cJoel Kaplan was always an exceptionally decent, diligent, principled guy who worked with me, so I can\u2019t give you a running commentary on a book I haven\u2019t read about a person I don\u2019t know at a time when I wasn\u2019t even at the company.\u201d Now he\u2019s getting agitated: \u201cIf people want, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s left Facebook, he\u2019s now going to condemn them\u2019 \u2013 of course I\u2019m not, that\u2019s not what my book is about. It\u2019s not how I feel, and even if that\u2019s how I felt, I wouldn\u2019t then write that book.<\/p>\n

With Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg in 2018. Photograph: via Sheryl Sandberg\/Facebook<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I felt Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg were the monsters other people say they are, I don\u2019t think I would ever have worked there \u2026 Are there things where I very strongly disagree with them? Are there mistakes they\u2019ve made? You bet there are, many of which they\u2019ve acknowledged. But, you know, at the end of the day I arrived at that company convinced these were two people who recognised it needed to change dramatically and took me on to deliver the change.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reforms he fought for included creating an independent oversight board to adjudicate big decisions, such as whether to suspend high-profile users, and commissioning independent research tracking the impact of various measures \u2013 banning political ads, or switching feeds to chronological rather than algorithmic order \u2013 on control groups of users during the 2020 election. \u201cThe wildly underwhelming conclusion was it makes almost no difference at all to how people actually vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also introduced new parental controls, including the ability to limit children\u2019s time on Instagram \u2013 though the Cleggs didn\u2019t ration their own boys\u2019 screen time. \u201cWe\u2019ve always just talked to them a lot about what they are seeing \u2013 I\u2019ll find out in 20 years if it\u2019s done any good. Thankfully I have football-obsessed boys, so they spend all their time looking at clips of the latest Messi goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I ask about his toughest day at Meta, I\u2019m half expecting something like the suicide of 14-year-old Molly Russell<\/a>, who had been viewing self-harm images on Instagram (the coroner ruled she died \u201cwhile suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content\u201d). But, instead, he picks the \u201cvery, very uncomfortable\u201d decision he took to suspend Trump from Facebook in 2021<\/a> for incendiary posts during the Capitol Hill riots. \u201cI 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 \u2026 it\u2019s an unelected private company making a decision that affects the public realm. And he was the outgoing president of the world\u2019s most powerful democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He would still defend the decision, but the precedent set troubles him. \u201cIn the end, in a democracy you want democratically accountable figures to thrash it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having seen America\u2019s descent into rightwing populism, does he think Britain can avoid that fate? Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are \u201cdecent people\u201d, he suggests, but maddeningly cautious. \u201cI just wish they took bigger swings. It\u2019s all these endless half measures \u2013 a little reform here, a little step towards Europe there, a little placation towards Trump. What they\u2019ll learn, which I learned, is you only have one crack at it.\u201d For all the coalition\u2019s flaws, he says, it was bold. \u201cI remember sitting around a table with Cameron and [George] Osborne saying, \u2018Look, this is coalition government, it\u2019s probably not going to last, let\u2019s just go for it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Labour should, he argues, be pinning the failures of Brexit on Farage. \u201cHis one biggest achievement was a disaster. It\u2019s made us poorer, weaker, less relevant, more anxious, more inward-looking.\u201d Nor does he think they can remain close to both Trump and the EU. \u201cAt the end of the day, we as an island will have to decide. There will be a choice between Europe and America,\u201d he says exasperatedly, citing Vance\u2019s support for the far-right AfD during elections in Germany. \u201cThis was American political interference in domestic election contests in Europe, way more overt than anything the Russians ever did.\u201d He was horrified by Vance\u2019s now-infamous Munich speech<\/a>, which argued the real threat to Europe was from unchecked migration and exclusion of the far right. \u201cIt\u2019s hiding in plain sight, you have to choose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photograph: David Vintiner\/The Guardian. Grooming: Alice Theobald at Arlington Artists using Rhug Wild Beauty and Charlotte Tilbury <\/p>\n

In January, he made his choice. But Silicon Valley chose very differently. Why did the once-liberal scions of tech fall in <\/strong>so fast behind Trump? It wasn\u2019t just in hopes of avoiding tougher regulation, Clegg argues: he thinks the shared determination to win an arms race with China over AI created an unhealthy alliance between American tech, military and political elites, exemplified in Musk\u2019s quasi-government role as chainsaw wielder-in-chief. For democracy\u2019s sake, he was relieved when the president won a recent standoff with the unelected Musk over planned tax cuts. \u201cAnyone who cares about making sure these tech bros are held in check and the people we elect are in charge \u2013 whatever else one might think about him, it was important that the political won.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having worked at the top of both fields, Clegg rejects the idea that tech companies are more powerful than governments. \u201cThey don\u2019t determine the curriculum of your child\u2019s history lessons, or whether you send people into war, or raise or lower people\u2019s taxes.\u201d Yet he recounts a conversation with the then British chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who pointed out that Meta could afford to do things the entire British state could not, like ploughing \u201c70 billion quid\u201d a year into building AI infrastructure. And therein lies the book\u2019s warning.<\/p>\n

Five years from now, Clegg predicts, \u201cagentic\u201d AI \u2013 bots who will navigate tasks online for us \u2013 will be routinely embedded in our phones, or perhaps in wearables such as glasses. They\u2019ll do everything for us from \u201cme being reminded of my mum\u2019s birthday, to booking a holiday, to recommending songs you like\u201d.<\/p>\n

Much of the content we\u2019ll see will be AI-generated by platform owners, who\u2019ll build and own the underlying infrastructure on which this AI-powered future depends. AI could be empowering, he argues, liberating humans from tiresome admin. But the more we rely on it just to live our daily lives, the more power and wealth could accrue to the handful of companies controlling it. \u201cWhen power gets concentrated in so few hands for such extensive social impact \u2013 way bigger than social media \u2026 \u201d Clegg pauses. \u201cI don\u2019t think these companies will continue to have social permission to operate.\u201d Is he saying these are conditions for social unrest? \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

He suspects AI will eat human jobs more slowly than forecast, \u201cat a pace we will be able to socially adapt to\u201d if we\u2019re lucky. \u201cHaving said that, I think there are potentially the ingredients for pitchfork fury at this small elite of people accruing vast, vast wealth, while there is a great deal of turbulence and adjustment and pain\u201d. If big tech push their luck, he argues, they risk being nationalised.<\/p>\n

Will people like his old boss listen? \u201cI think these companies will realise, if they\u2019re smart, they\u2019re not going to be able to lord it over society like some sci-fi movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

His own next step, he says, is trying to prevent the European tech industry getting sidelined, as he fears it is \u201churtling towards museum status. The situation is so much worse than people appreciate.\u201d American GDP has rocketed away from Europe\u2019s in the last decade, he points out, creating a painfully obvious disparity in lifestyles. \u201cLook at the Cotswolds, it\u2019s become a sort of Disney for rich Americans.\u201d But, mostly, he wants to keep making the case for the future, rather than for retreating into the past. \u201cIf you fear everything new, you will do nothing for fear that something might go wrong,\u201d he says passionately. \u201cThe whole point of being progressive is to think that tomorrow will be better than today, that you\u2019re excited about the possibilities of the future.\u201d Though in politics, at least, that future no longer belongs to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The rain is just starting to fall from a grey London sky as Sir Nick Clegg arrives, ducking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-366603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115076770274433364","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}