Nick Clegg

Education

Clegg was educated at two private schools: at Caldicott School in Farnham Royal in South Buckinghamshire, where he was joint Head Prefect in 1980, and later at Westminster School in Central London. As a 16-year-old exchange student in Munich, he and a friend drunkenly set fire to what he called "the leading collection of cacti in Germany". When news of the incident was reported during his time as Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson, Clegg said he was "not proud" of it. He was arrested and not formally charged, but performed a type of community service.

Clegg spent a gap year working as a skiing instructor in Austria, before going on to Cambridge in 1986, where he studied Archaeology and Anthropology at Robinson College. He was active in the student theatre, acting in a production of The Normal Heart under the director Sam Mendes. He was also captain of his college's tennis team, and campaigned for the human rights organisation Survival International. Clegg spent the summer of 1989 as an office junior in Postipankki bank in Helsinki.

It has been alleged that Clegg joined the Cambridge University Conservative Association between 1986 and 1987. Clegg has maintained he has "no recollection of that whatsoever". However, Conservative MP Greg Hands has a record of CUCA members for 1986–1987, and Clegg's name appears on the list. Hands noted that "for the avoidance of any doubt, there was only one 'N Clegg' at Robinson College... [he] is listed in the 'Robinson College Record', under 'Freshmen 1986'. He graduated with an upper second class honours (2:1) degree in social anthropology.

After university, he was awarded a scholarship to study for a year at the University of Minnesota, where he wrote a thesis on the political philosophy of the Deep Green movement. He then moved to New York City, where he worked as an intern under Christopher Hitchens at The Nation, a progressive liberal magazine, where he fact-checked Hitchens's articles.

Clegg next moved to Brussels, where he worked alongside Guy Spier for six months as a trainee in the G24 coordination unit which delivered aid to the countries of the former Soviet Union. After the internship he studied for a master's degree at the College of Europe in Bruges, a university for European studies in Belgium, where he met his wife, Miriam González Durántez, a lawyer and the daughter of a Spanish senator. Nick Clegg is an alumnus of the "Mozart Promotion" (1991–92) of the College of Europe.

Broadcasting and media

From January 2013 until 2015, Clegg presented a weekly radio show on LBC called Call Clegg. Initially broadcast in the London area, the programme went national along with LBC in February 2014. The programme was nominated for two Radio Academy Awards in 2014.

Between April and October 2018, Clegg fronted a podcast called Anger Management with Nick Clegg, in which he interviewed known persons about the politics of anger. Since the first episode, it has been featured in The Guardian under Podcast of the Week.

A party political broadcast in which Clegg apologised for the Liberal Democrats breaking the promise over tuition fees was remixed into a song, "Nick Clegg Says I'm Sorry" by The Poke and Alex Ross, and sold on iTunes as a charity single. The song charted on 23 September 2012 at number 143 in the Official UK Singles Charts before climbing to 104 the following week. In his 2010 production Dandelion Mind, comedian Bill Bailey sang "Nick Clegg you don't have to wear that dress tonight, walk the streets for money, you don't have to sell your body to the right" to the tune of "Roxanne".

Facebook

In June 2018, vice-president of global affairs and communications at Facebook, Inc. Elliot Schrage resigned his position. After talks with the Facebook leadership and Richard Allan, Baron Allan of Hallam, Facebook's Director of Policy in Europe and the Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam before Clegg, in October 2018 Clegg was hired as a lobbyist and public relations officer, replacing Schrage as vice-president, Global Affairs and Communications. He joined Facebook because he was "convinced that the culture is changing" and that "lawmakers need to have a serious conversation about whether data-intensive companies allow other companies to share and use data". He admitted that the Cambridge Analytica data scandal had "rocked Facebook to its very foundations" and told the BBC that the company "hadn't done enough in the past" in regards to data privacy.

In April 2019, Clegg was accused by Věra Jourová, European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, in a letter signed by a number of senior EU civil servants, of misunderstanding EU law, stating that proposed new Facebook guidelines on political advertising would "hinder the exercise of EU electoral rights." In May 2019, he rejected calls by American presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, as well as Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes to break Facebook up, saying that Facebook was "a great American success story" and that "I don't think it's a very American tradition to start penalizing success." In June 2019, Clegg said there was "absolutely no evidence" that Russia had influenced the outcome of the EU referendum using Facebook. He said that the company was working towards greater regulation of technology firms. In October 2019, Damian Collins, chair of the British House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, formally asked Clegg to explain why Facebook had exempted political statements from fact-checking guidelines.

In 2020, Clegg helped lead the creation of the Facebook Oversight Board, which reported to him, convincing former Danish Prime Minister and former College of Europe friend Helle Thorning-Schmidt to serve as its co-chair. He then played a role in Facebook's deplatforming of U.S. President Donald Trump in mid-2021.

Ahead of the release of the whistleblown Facebook Files in October 2021, Clegg authored an internal memo saying that there was no evidence Facebook was a main cause in polarisation and that the company does not "profit from polarization, in fact, just the opposite." He later posted a public statement saying that the reporting on the Files "conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook's leadership and employees," saying that it was "just plain false" that Facebook ignored its own internal research. After the release of the Files, he then made a number of public interviews defending the company. In one of the interviews, he stated that "I can't give you a yes or no answer" when asked if Facebook played a role in amplifying extremist content ahead of the 2021 United States Capitol attack. Clegg faced criticism for his role in defending the company, with the Guardian journalist John Harris dubbing him "the fall guy for Facebook's failures". In February 2022, Clegg was promoted to president of global affairs.

In January 2025, Clegg announced he would step down from his role as president of global affairs and leave Meta within "the next few months". He is set to be succeeded by his current deputy Joel Kaplan, a Republican who previously served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff under George W. Bush. The leadership change has been described as an attempt to improve Meta's relations with Donald Trump, who is set to begin his second term as U.S. president 17 days after the announcement. At the time of the announcement, The Guardian reported that Clegg had sold some $18.4 million (£14.8 million) of Meta shares, while retaining a holding worth $21m.

In September 2000, Clegg married Miriam González Durántez, from Valladolid, Spain. They have three sons. While Clegg has stated that he does not believe in God, his wife is a Roman Catholic and they are bringing up their children as Catholics. On 16 September 2010, during Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom, Clegg attended the State reception in the grounds of Holyrood Palace and was introduced to the Pope by Her Majesty the Queen. Clegg identifies as a feminist.

Upon being hired by Facebook, Clegg moved to Atherton, California, having previously lived in Parkfields, Putney, south west London. He also has a house in his former constituency close to the Peak District, and often walked with his wife near Stanage Edge, which he describes as "one of the most romantic places in the world". In May 2010 Downing Street announced that Clegg and the Foreign Secretary William Hague would share use of Chevening, which is typically the official country residence of the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom. In August 2022, Clegg announced he was returning to live in London for personal reasons, including being closer to elderly parents, dividing his working time between London and California.

When he appeared on Desert Island Discs in October 2010, his choice of discs included Johnny Cash, Prince and Radiohead and his luxury was a "stash of cigarettes". In an interview in April 2011, Clegg stated he dealt with the pressures of political office by reading novels late at night and he "cries regularly to music". He supports Arsenal F.C.

Written publications

Clegg has written extensively, publishing and contributing to a large number of pamphlets and books. With Richard Grayson he wrote a book in 2002 about the importance of devolution in secondary education systems, based on comparative research across Europe. The final conclusions included the idea of pupil premiums so that children from poorer backgrounds receive the additional resources their educational needs require.

He wrote a controversial pamphlet for the Centre for European Reform advocating devolution and evolution of the European Union, and contributed to the 2004 Orange Book, where he offered market liberal solutions for reform of European institutions. He co-authored a pamphlet with Duncan Brack arguing for a wholesale reform of world trade rules to allow room for a greater emphasis on development, internationally binding environmental treaties, and parliamentary democracy within the WTO system.