Nick Clegg

Sir Nick Clegg served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Lord President of the Privy Council from May 2010 to May 2015. First elected to the UK Parliament in 2005, he became leader of the Liberal Democrats, Britain’s third-largest political party two years later. Following the 2010 general election, he led the party into government for the first time since its founding, forming the UK’s first post-war coalition administration and serving as deputy prime minister throughout its full term. He stood down as party leader after the 2015 general election and left Parliament in 2017.

A prominent pro-European voice in British politics, Sir Nick played a significant role in the public debate surrounding Brexit after the 2016 referendum. He founded Open Reason, a think tank focused on issues ranging from drug policy reform to the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He also serves as a Global Commissioner for the Global Commission on Drug Policy and is a trustee of both the Social Mobility Foundation and Radix, a centrist policy think tank.

After two decades in British and European public life, Sir Nick transitioned to the private sector, joining Meta (then Facebook) as Vice-President for Global Affairs and Communications in October 2018. He was appointed President for Global Affairs in 2022. Earlier in his career, he spent ten years in European institutions, first as a senior adviser within the European Commission, where he worked on matters including the accession of China and Russia to the World Trade Organisation, and subsequently as a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2004. Sir Nick stepped down from his role at Meta and left the company in January 2025.

He is the author of Politics: Between the Extremes, a reflection on his time in government and the role of liberalism in contemporary politics, and How to Stop Brexit (and Make Britain Great Again), which sets out the case for revisiting the UK’s departure from the European Union, and most recently, How to Save the Internet: The Threat to Global Connection in the Age of AI and Political Conflict.

Sir Nick Clegg holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge and postgraduate qualifications from the University of Minnesota and the College of Europe in Bruges. He was awarded a knighthood in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to politics and public life.