Nick Clegg, the former British deputy prime minister turned Meta executive, is leaving after a seven-year stint with the social media company. Clegg announced his departure in posts on X and Threads, saying that “this is the right time for me to move on from my role as President, Global Affairs at Meta.”
Clegg will be replaced by Joel Kaplan, a longtime policy executive and former White House aide to George W. Bush known for his deep ties to Republican circles in Washington. As Chief Global Affairs Officer, Kaplan — as Semafor notes —will be well-positioned to run interference for Meta as Donald Trump takes control of the White House.
Clegg joined Meta in 2018, a year after the British public deemed the former leader of the Liberal Democrats unelectable. The company then known as Facebook was looking to improve its political relationships after Cambridge Analytica and other scandals. In 2022, he was promoted to President of Global Affairs, a position that reported directly to Mark Zuckerberg (his previous role was overseen by Meta’s then-COO Sheryl Sandberg).
The former politician played a key role in some of Meta’s most significant and controversial decisions. He publicly defended the company’s decision not to apply its fact checking policies to politicians and authored its public statements about the suspension and reinstatement of Donald Trump’s Facebook account. More recently, Clegg has criticized the European Union’s handling of tech regulation, arguing that the bloc is hampering advancements in AI.
“My time at the company coincided with a significant resetting of the relationship between ‘big tech’ and the societal pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and norms affecting the sector,” Clegg wrote in a post on Threads. “I hope I have played some role in seeking to bridge the very different worlds of tech and politics – worlds that will continue to interact in unpredictable ways across the globe.”
Clegg said in a Facebook post that he will spend the next “few months” working with Kaplan and “representing the company at a number of international gatherings in Q1 of this year” before he formally steps away from the company. He didn’t indicate what he may do next.
