Sam FrancisPolitical reporter
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Former UK deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg has accused right-wing US politicians, including JD Vance, of “rank hypocrisy” for attacking UK speech laws while silencing dissent at home.
Since coming to office this year, the US vice president has repeatedly criticised measures like the UK’s Online Safety Act and claimed free speech in Europe was “in retreat”.
Sir Nick accused Vance of an “outrageous double standard” for attacking UK free speech laws while trying to “intimidate and bully” critics.
The ex-Lib Dem leader, who until last year was Mark Zuckerberg’s deputy at Meta, warned Silicon Valley’s ties with the Trump administration were starting to look like “Chinese-style cooperation”.
In February, Vance used his first international speech since taking office to berate close US allies over immigration and speech laws.
During his speech at the Munich Security Conference, Vance cited the conviction of a British army veteran for silently praying outside an abortion clinic as proof that “basic liberties of religious Britons” were under threat.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Sir Nick said he “cannot stand the rank hypocrisy” of senior right-wing American politicians “flying first class or by private jet over to the United Kingdom and declaring that somehow there is excessive censorship in the UK and then flying back to the US to basically intimidate and bully and cow their own opponents”.
He said the behaviour of many in the Trump administration “is flagrantly contrary to American principles of free expression”.
Asked if he included JD Vance among these figures, Sir Nick said: “That includes them all.
“I think it is an outrageous example of double standards.”
Yet Sir Nick warns the UK is “over-censorious” online, citing police making 30 arrests a day for offensive posts.
He warns crackdowns on online “speech that is offensive, unpleasant, vile” but not illegal open the door to political abuse.
“Part of the definitions of living in a free society is that you can say things that are offensive and other people violently disagree with,” Sir Nick said.
Over-censoring offensive but legal speech empowered figures like Nigel Farage who “will get more of a hearing the more imprecise these boundaries are”.
At the same time, he said age verification rules in the Online Safety Act aimed at preventing young people from encountering harmful content “did not go far enough”.
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Sir Nick said seeing his boss Mark Zuckerberg alongside senior tech figures at Donald Trump’s inauguration was “one of the reasons” he left his job at Meta.
The former Liberal Democrat leader, who served as deputy PM to David Cameron in 2010’s coalition government, swapped Westminster for Silicon Valley after losing his Sheffield Hallam seat to Labour in the 2017 general election.
In 2022, he was promoted to a senior role by Zuckerberg, with responsibility for policy as well as communication and a reported bonus of £10m on top of his £2.7m annual salary.
But he left the company in January just weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House after the president repeatedly accused Meta and other platforms of censorship and silencing conservative speech.
Sir Nick used his Newsnight interview to attack Silicon Valley’s relationship with Donald Trump, which he said was starting to look like “Chinese-style cooperation”.
Tech firms were beginning to resemble the “politically directed companies of China,” he argued, despite their criticism of Chinese authoritarianism.
Seeing tech bosses like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mr Zuckerberg line up behind Donald Trump at his inauguration in January was “one of the reasons where I thought probably it’s time to move on from Silicon Valley”.
“Private sector enterprise and ingenuity and innovation thrives best when it’s kept at a certain sort of arm’s length from politics and politicians,” he added.
Sir Nick, who is promoting his forthcoming book How to Save the Internet, said: “There’s only one thing worse than having politicians and business people at each other’s throats – it’s having them in each other’s pockets.”