When Britain\u2019s former deputy PM took a job at Meta, nothing could have prepared him for the \u2018cloying conformity\u2019 of the tech world. So why does he still think social media is a force for good?<\/p>\n
\u2022 Read an exclusive extract from Nick Clegg\u2019s new book here<\/a><\/p>\n The rain is just starting to fall from a grey London sky as Sir Nick Clegg arrives, duckingthrough the traffic and carrying what looks like his laundry. C lean 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