In a basement in Southwark, Nick Clegg is planning his next act. The former deputy prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats lost his seat in the general election in June. After twelve years as an MP, his life is no longer dictated by the urgent demands – ”the furnace,” he calls it – of day-to-day party politics. Which leaves a dilemma: what to do next?
For Clegg, in particular, this is a difficult question. Former prime ministers have a template for life after power: the boards, the speaking engagements, the worthy foundation. Former deputies and party leaders do not – especially not aged 50. But, then, as Clegg notes, “I've rarely had in politics a particular model to follow. I've always had to, in a sense, break new ground, which I enjoy.”
So, rather than retiring to a shed, he’s set up a new think tank called Open Reason: “to develop and promote liberal ideas and causes.” That means continuing to oppose Brexit, which still makes him as passionately angry as ever – ”I’m not!” he jumps in, when I admit to feeling exhausted by the process – and also intervening in new areas, in particular the fractious, bitter relationship between tech and politics, the subject of his first big post-office speech, which he delivers at ad:tech London today.
“I'm going to start increasingly speaking out on those issues,” he says, “because I'm worried that there's a wider collision brewing. There's a mixture of arrogance and naiveté in parts of the tech world and ignorance and fear in parts of the political world, whether it's tax or the Russians or fake news or extremism. Hopefully what Open Reason can do is shed some light on a debate that's often more distinguished by heat and ignorance.”
The think tank certainly looks the part: based in a Southwark co-working space, next to an ad tech firm, it has every stereotypical startup accessory, there’ even tennis table in the kitchen. Next year it will join the creatives and makers in London’s Somerset House. Still, for the present at least, it’s fair to say Clegg’s promised illumination is a work in progress.
Take fake news. Clegg observes, correctly, that’s it’s hardly new, pointing out the hypocrisy of “these odious people from the Daily Mail ranting about fake news when they publish absolute unadulterated rubbish and lies.” But online, he agrees, “the scale is so different.” So it is new. No – it’s just an expression of an age-old desire. “I think [the social media giants] now get that they've got to do much more to verify what's circulating, but don't pretend they invented this tendency.”
He treats artificial intelligence in the same way, enthusiastically embracing its potential to revolutionise everything from healthcare to policing, while at the same time dismissing warnings that it will lead to mass unemployment. "On the whole the experience suggests that it will be accompanied by the growth in new forms of employment."
He welcomes strong regulation, but laments the way GDPR “doesn’t enjoy the confidence of many of the business that will be affected.” He’s happy for firms to collect wealth and power, as long as they can be easily taxed afterwards. He talks very freely – he’s warmer and earthier in person than he appears on TV – but he’s extremely hard to pin down. He’s a walking A-Level essay: presenting his arguments from one side, then the other, before finally landing in the middle.
In one sense, this is hardly unexpected. Clegg is a man whose entire career has been based on the faith that people are essentially reasonable, and that reasonable people can solve any problem if only they’re prepared to compromise. All the same, after the events of recent years, I’m a little surprised.
In 2016, shortly after the EU referendum, Clegg made a short film for Newsnight about Ebbw Vale, one of the Welsh towns where people received lots of EU funding, yet still voted for Brexit. In the video, he admits he didn’t understand the anger and helplessness these towns felt when their old jobs disappeared.
I ask Clegg about the experience. If this post-industrial unemployment produced the turmoil of Brexit, isn’t an AI revolution more than we can handle?
"We shouldn't think we're not able," he says. "We're not without the ability to innovate ourselves – as governments, politicians and democratic societies – in the face of these technological changes. That's my point. It's bad to feel passive and hopeless about it. We're not. We weren't in the past. We don't need to be again."
One proposal growing in popularity is the notion of a Universal Basic Income. But despite his enthusiasm for innovative policies, Clegg hates the concept. "The idea that progress is measured by ending work is something I flatly, totally, comprehensively disagree with." Instead, he wants to help workers adapt to changing circumstances by boosting and overhauling vocational and adult education. He refers admiringly to the Danish system of lifelong education. “If Denmark can do it, we can do it!”
True, but – and this is the thing – we don't. Improving vocational education has been on governments' to do list for decades. Clegg's coalition government made brutal cuts to adult education funding (not to mention the notorious decision to lift the cap on undergraduate fees to £9,000). "A lot of it's kind of obvious," Clegg says about his suggestions. But if it's so obvious, why doesn't it happen? Could it be that, instead of helping, the constant urge to compromise undermines the case for reform?
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It’s even possible to ask what role liberalism has in this new techno-politics. How can we carry on pretending that individuals exercise sovereign free will when they are clearly influenced by circumstances, both digital and physical? This is the argument the historian Yuval Noah Harari presents in Homo Deus: as soon as they become capable, he argues, we will hand responsibility for decisions over to machines, and that will be the end of liberalism as we know it.
Clegg agrees the freely-choosing individual is a myth. But, he adds, “I think myths are very important to be aspirations to which you constantly strive. I'm a liberal. I believe liberalism does start with the idea that there's something beautiful and precious about the individual. Politics in my book is very simply about enhancing, not ever completely delivering, but enhancing the maximum amount of sovereignty of individuals to live out their lives as they wish to the best of their abilities. That's That's the way I've always regarded my politics.”
Now, that ambition is at the very heart of his biggest campaign: Brexit. “It's outrageous what's happening to our country and we shouldn't be sick of it. We should remain really angry. People are fed up talking about it because they think that their anger is impotent.” He emphasises every word: “Absolutely not true.”
This is his message for UK tech. “Pretty much everyone I speak to in the tech sector privately, they feel this sucking sound. Things that could have started here starting in Berlin. Investments that could be made here being put on ice. New innovations that could have flourished here starting to flourish in Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Lisbon. I mean of course I know everyone's very busy running their own businesses and so on, but if it is as existential as I keep being told privately it is, why don't we hear more publicly? Where is the pressure? The only pressure she's getting is from the nutters on her right. This is not just the tech sector – I say is by the way to captains of industry, who run good old-fashioned industries. I say, ‘Where are you? You keep telling me privately it's a disaster. Don't tell me! I'm not in government any more, I'm just private citizen Clegg now.'”
He says there is a way forward: either stop Brexit and think again, or pursue a more sensible Brexit where the UK stays in the single market and customs union. “But it really does require – now, right now, and in the next few months – the tech sector and other sectors to say publicly to the government and to politicians what I know you keep saying privately.”
There's something about the way he speaks – angry, insistent, refusing to accept excuses. And then it dawns on me: Nick Clegg is being unreasonable. He's surprisingly good at it. Maybe, if he'd been unreasonable earlier, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
