There have been many ironic fates for the lead actors in the Coalition government. For David Cameron, the premier who pledged to ‘clean up’ the ‘culture of excessive lobbying’ there was the Greensill scandal. For George Osborne, the austerity Chancellor who decimated the culture sector, there was a smorgasbord of jobs and the chairmanship of the British Museum.
Chris Huhne was jailed, Oliver Letwin lost the whip while Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, now works at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank – an institution used to front China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative.’
But none of these have been as both paradoxically high-profile and humiliating as Sir Nick Clegg’s strange parliamentary after-life as vice-president of Facebook. The former deputy PM joined the social media giant three years ago this month and has endured something of a torrid time excusing the antics of Mark Zuckerberg’s global behemoth as it lurches from one crisis to the next.
We in Britain are largely spared the semi-regular appearances of Clegg popping up to shill on prime time television – that’s a treat instead reserved for American viewers for whom he has become something of a depressingly familiar fixture.
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