Silicon Valley is full of wealthy men who think they’re victims, says Nick Clegg
Silicon Valley is full of hubris and hugely wealthy and macho men who think they are victims, the former politician and Facebook executive Nick Clegg has said.The former leader of the Liberal Democrats makes the claim in a new book chronicling his three careers as an MEP in Brussels, an MP and deputy prime minister in Westminster and as a communications and public policy strategist in San Francisco.In an interview with the Guardian, Clegg heaped praise on his former boss, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Meta, but was scathing of the culture fostered in the tech capital of the world where he said wealth and power was interlaced with “self pity”.“In Silicon Valley, far from thinking they’re lucky, they think they’re hard done by, [that] they’re victims.I couldn’t, and still can’t, understand this deeply unattractive combination of machismo and self-pity.
He said: “It is a cultural thing, through from Elon Musk’s chainsaw-wielding stuff to any Silicon Valley podcast,If you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression,”The former deputy prime minister added he was not talking about Zuckerberg personally, whom Clegg described as thoughtful and endlessly curious about subjects the Facebook founder did not excel in,Clegg has returned to London, having quit his job in the US in January, before a shift in political attitude across Silicon Valley where tech billionaires including Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Tim Cook began engineering proximity to Donald Trump,His new book, How to Save the Internet, goes behind the scenes at Meta and provides insight into how Silicon Valley’s insularity has blinded it to its missteps.
“Everyone wears the same clothes, drives the same cars, listens to the same podcasts, follows the same fads,” Clegg said.“It’s a place born of immense sort of herd-like behaviour.”But of the three bubbles he has inhabited in his working life, Clegg said he found Westminster “the most insufferable, partly just because of the living on past glories and the pomposity of it”.Clegg had little to say on David Cameron, his coalition partner between 2010 and 2015, but said he would have disagreed with him on a referendum to leave the EU in 2016.The vote took place a year after the Lib Dems suffered a crushing defeat in a general election, prompting Clegg to quit as leader of the party and later take a role at the Facebook group, now known as Meta, in 2018.
Clegg is convinced Britain will rejoin the EU within his lifetime, and said if he ever saw that debate resuming, he’d return to the political fray in a heartbeat, though not in public office.“I’d drop everything – whether to stuff envelopes or man the barricades,” he said.While Clegg said he had no desire to return to politics, his wife, Miriam González Durántez, is considering leading a new centrist party in her native Spain.But vacating the frontline of British politics doesn’t mean Clegg holds back on events in Westminster.Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are “decent people”, he said, but maddeningly cautious.
“I just wish they took bigger swings,It’s all these endless half measures – a little reform here, a little step towards Europe there, a little placation towards Trump,I think what they’ll learn, which I learned, is you only have one crack at it,”How to Save the Internet by Nick Clegg (Vintage Publishing, £25),To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.
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US Open tennis day one: Raducanu and Shelton race through, Sabalenka wins – as it happened
We’ll call it a day on the blog. Of course, there’s still Novak Djokovic to come in the evening, up against Learner Tien, the Serbian targeting his first slam in two years. Cheers all for reading this and I’ll be back tomorrow for more.In case you missed it, here’s Tumaini Carayol’s report from Emma Raducanu’s very comfortable first-round win.This is fun, we’re on a final set tie-break between Alexandra Eala and 14th seed Clara Tauson
Olsen-Baker and Leti-I’iga injuries dampen win as New Zealand fly past Spain
New Zealand are up and running in their Rugby World Cup defence with a big win against Spain, but the victory was marred by injuries to Kaipo Olsen-Baker, who was helped off the pitch with a suspected ankle issue, and the star wing Ayesha Leti-I’iga. The Black Ferns finished with 13 players on the pitch.New Zealand’s director of performance, Allan Bunting, had no update on either player after the game as they are waiting for them to be assessed. The lock Alana Bremner said she was proud of how they adapted.Bremner said: “We were talking after and said ‘we didn’t realise we were 13 for a couple of minutes there’
Brazil fans enjoy carnival atmosphere despite World Cup rout by South Africa | Luke McLaughlin
In certain other sports, Brazil’s absence from any World Cup tournament would be regarded as downright bizarre. It’s not quite like that in rugby, and their women’s 15s team created history simply by running on to the turf.The first Brazil team to qualify for a men’s or women’s Rugby World Cup had played only 16 times before this, winning five matches, including a playoff against Colombia that secured qualification. Their prize, if you can call it that, was an intimidating opener against the famously powerful South Africa.“Our first Brazil fan of the day,” one of the friendly volunteers outside Northampton train station declared just before 10am, as supporters began to drift from the platforms towards the venue
Raducanu thrashes Ena Shibahara for first US Open victory since 2021 title
Four years after her three life-changing weeks in New York, Emma Raducanu overcame a significant mental hurdle as she secured her first victory at the US Open since her 2021 title run in impressive fashion, dismantling the qualifier Ena Shibahara 6-1, 6-2 to finally return to the second round.After painful first-round defeats by Alizé Cornet and Sofia Kenin, plus a withdrawal in 2023 during an eight-month injury layoff, Raducanu showed her growth and newfound self-assurance by putting together a solid, clean performance against an inferior opponent.“It has been on my mind,” Raducanu said of her inability to win a match in New York. “It’s been four years, and it’s a very special tournament for me. I did feel different coming into it this year
Fremantle meet the moment as AFL’s final round unfolds in dramatic fashion | Jonathan Horn
I’ve never been one to run with the “let’s just stick to football” line. But every person has their breaking point. Mine came this week when Andrew Dillon – a man who’d spent the previous four days weighing and measuring a slur, and four days negotiating five weeks down to four – carved out a good chunk of his press conference reminding us that Snoop Dogg was “a grandfather and a philanthropist”. A few hours later, footage emerged of a less than grandfatherly and less than philanthropic headline act, accompanied by the headline “Snoop Dogg’s Dig at Gay Parents”. That was it for me
Ireland open with six-try win over Japan to give them hope of making last eight
The shadow of the defending champions, New Zealand, looms over Pool C and on that basis Ireland could not afford to lose. They kicked off their World Cup campaign with a fluent win, in which every element of their game functioned well on the immaculate Franklin’s Gardens pitch.Japan won the previous match between these two, a 29-10 victory in 2022, and had they upset the odds it would hardly have represented a sequel to the Miracle of Brighton. But Ireland are a different proposition under Scott Bemand and their physicality and accuracy, for the most part, was just too much for their willing opponents. Japan were outclassed and overpowered, but two converted tries gave their impressive supporters something to shout about
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