Nick Clegg

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So there were absolutely no hard feelings or anything, but it was just a very good time after seven years for me to move on.

I mean, to put it mildly, it was not exactly the kind of thing that appealed to me.

Well, I didn't even try.

Actually, I tried to make the alternative case, which was that I think in the long run for these big monster companies, and as much as you care about their longevity, I think they, for their own business interests, I'm not talking about my old life as a politician, because I wasn't employed as a politician.

But I actually just think as a sort of business person, I don't think it's sensible business to flip-flop every time the political weather changes in Europe.

In Washington, in the US, that is.

Now, it's particularly difficult for social media companies because in the US, which is quite different to here in the UK, people are totally split.

I mean, about one half of the country thinks that companies like Meta actively censor and suppress their view of the world.

And another half who yell at them and say, you're not censoring enough to keep us safe.

There's a much more polarized debate there.

And I think if you're sort of holding the ring in that kind of context, dealing with something as sensitive about speech and where speech moderation ends and free expression begins and so on, it's more sensible to try and, you know, refrain from jumping into one political camp or another.

I think you might be interested in this, and I'm not sure if you can pick this up in your

conversations in the US.

Silicon Valley is always susceptible to ludicrous hyperbole, often, by the way, hyperbole, which they then go and act upon, for better or for worse.

But they're not politicians.

And oddly enough, I was often in these conversations where I was the only person who'd ever been elected to anything.

And what was so interesting at the time of the Trump 2 victory was the absolute

And self-confident assertion from the most senior tech bros across Silicon Valley, which was this was not an ordinary election.

This was a paradigm shift.