TRASHFUTURE - Into the Clegg-averse

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

Former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg now works for Facebook to the tune of eight figures. He has some opinions about Facebook’s policy decisions. As you can guess, they sound like thoughts from a man who’s been hit in the head really hard–which is why Riley, Milo, and Alice analyze a recent Meta appearance in which his Nintendo Wii-looking avatar complains about his headset a lot, among other things. We also talk about the recent byelection in North Shropshire. Hope you enjoy! If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture If you’re in the UK and want to help Afghan refugees and internally displaced people, consider donating to Afghanaid: https://www.afghanaid.org.uk/ *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello and welcome to this final free episode of TF with me on it for the year. And before we open, I would just also like to say a huge congratulations to Gabrielle Boric and Julie for winning a at least social democratic majority in a country that is going to reexamine the Constitution that was basically written in the blood of striking workers by Milton Friedman himself. Best of luck to him. Congratulations. Anyway, let's get to the show. Hi, everybody. Welcome to this episode of TF. I don't know if the fucking world is not enough half from the drops and fucking make

room for the Nick Clegg one you wanted, but here. Thank you for not removing it. Did you remove the fucking also from the drops? Oh, I can give you the Jonathan Price Kung Fu noises. I can give you Jonathan Price Kung Fu noises. Absolutely. That's not the right one. You never said he was good at doing them. That's so good. Good golden eyes, isn't it? There you go. It's TF.

I almost said Vincent Price for a second. He's called Dracula. Oh, my. All right. All right. Look, look. I want to play a Christmas game. All right. The Christmas game, it's the anagram game like from the Simpsons. Is this gathering of ours legal since we're doing it for work purposes as a Christmas party? I'm sure there are a bunch of people taking pictures of it that are going to give it to our friends. Yeah, no, I'm sure I'm fine. Yeah, then going to betray us in the style of the television, popular television shows

succession where a bunch of rich people betray each other. Yeah, just make sure she's like recorded herself like making fun of people who might be worried about it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we should. Yeah, you know, just to really sort of get the vibe going. That shit was so funny. Like conveniently, we make these comforable art tapes of everyone who works for us. So if anyone needs to be in a kind of wolf throwing type situation. Well, it's, you know, it's it's it's sort of like a reputational tontine, except everyone reputation only dies. Every time we get into Downing Street, in order to get in the door, you have to say the hard R into a video. Yeah, there's got to be a video of you dropping a load

It's a voice recognition log and that's the opening phrase. Captain's log star. Yeah, you want to come into work, don't you? You don't want to open the door. I'm sure we could hire someone who wants it more than you. Yeah, that's such a that's such a great libertarian sort of experiment. Okay, so let's just say hypothetically you're trying to you're trying to get into your office. Yeah, what if the only way to unlock your office is to say a slur? Yeah, that's right. No, no, right. Look, we're going to play the underground game. It's a Christmas game. And it's Delta Omicron. This game was already played, by the way, by Lord Ashcroft,

potentially one of the most respected sort of mainstream British pollsters. Oh, yeah, pages and pages written about him being this sort of like Svangali like figure. Yeah, the guy from the verb Lord Ashcroft. A guy who again is generally seen as a respectable establishment figure who can be sort of trusted with public with sussing out public opinion and who also is a billionaire, someone who crucially is not totally out of his mind. Yeah, absolutely. Very normal man. Yeah. So he I love this. He post just posted on Twitter the words Delta Omicron with anagramed to media control. It's like, yeah, man, you cracked it. I love how influential you are in

the direction of the politics of this country. Great. There was a reply to this that was just the greatest ethering I've ever seen on Twitter.com where someone just replied with a picture of how you could anagramize his name to be Dr. Fart School. And they replied with just that and nothing else. I was like, this is what this website exists for. This is the pinnacle of posting. It's fun to it's fun to call him they call Lord Ashcroft Dr. Fart School, but it's also fun again to just one of the I think I don't know of all of the let's say downsides generally much of the downsides much explored in the last probably decade of social media. I'd say the there is nothing that compares to the the great and the good of our sort of politics just sort of

genuinely showing what fucking nitwits they are on a daily basis. And Twitter, that's the thing that Twitter has been revelatory for us. It's only real like material change in the world. It aside from like Trump tweets is just a perfect insight into all of these people's brains, which are not good. No, no, not at all. Anyway, all right, let's let's talk about some stuff. Some some some Britishness. Let's talk about some let's talk about some noises that Johnson Price made in the in the film. Welcome to kill James Bond. And I remind that. No. Look, look, look, some politics has continued to carry on. There's been a bio lecture, for example. Yeah, there has been. Yeah, the fucking North Somerset.

North Shropshire is in a sense very North Somerset. If you start a North Somerset and you just keep going north, you'll get north North Somerset. It's like North Macedonia. Yeah. Every constituency in the country should be defined by its relationship to Somerset. Or that's my new take. Look, my Scotland or North North North Somerset. Look, yeah, that's right. All the postcode should be like Somerset something. The only thing I care about is West Suffolk still has our boy there. Oh, yeah, baby. Look, just keep him in safe seats. It's all I care about. Well, there's no such thing anymore now, because one of the safest Tory seats in the country,

a seat that has voted Conservative for 200 years, is now in the hands. Drowning in pits. Is now drowning under a yellow pissy of liberal democracy. That's right. But I think, look, so to give you a little bit of background, and we talked about this the other day, right, that there was this by-election coming up after another by-election that was just a fucking damp squib of like, you know, 30-some odd percent turnout. And we're looking at another by-election in North Shropshire. It was Owen Patterson's constituency. And the Conservatives were absolutely fucking drugged.

20,000 majority was reduced to like, you know, a distant second. Yeah, as Alice said, constituency has voted Conservative for centuries. Yeah, and the Lib Dem now has a majority of 8,000, which is comfortable by anyone's standards. But the thing I think, and a lot of people are sort of saying, oh, what does this mean? What does this mean? Boris is done. And it's like, yeah, because like, people started writing about him accurately. He's done because he's like, it's been decided that he's done is the thing. This is what I say, right? This is, I think I've said this a couple of times before,

as we've been sort of charting sort of the expiration of Boris Johnson as, or the apparent expiration of Boris Johnson as a political force, is that this is not a this is not a win for the politics of public accountability or any of these things that liberals love so well. This is simply just a coup. This is this is elite rearrangement. It's an elite squabble. You wonder to do my favorite Simpson's joke, a bloodless coup, all smotherings. But I think the thing that people aren't sort of talking about enough is that the turnout of this by-election was like seven, eight percent higher than the turnout of the last by-election. So it's still like, you know, like 40, like early 40s percent.

Cool. This is just a turnout that's kind of just starting to lose its hair. So like apathy wins, basically. Correct. Yes. The if let's just not have an MP was a party, it would win. Yeah, that would be a cool party actually. No MP. It's genuinely been boosted sometimes that we should have a none of the above thing on a ballot paper, which would be fucking wild. I mean, except for the fact, for think about everyone who votes for the none of the above on the ballot paper would be the biggest nerd at the anarchist house. That's the person that's really, really worried about the chore wheel. And it's like, how do you live in an anarchist house? Stop worrying about the chore

wheel. That's there for show. Look, they're not supposed to have a clean sink in an anarchist house. All right. What is the chore wheel but a state of permanent revolution? That's right. Anyway, the wheel look so the the Lib Dems took the seat and again there once again, I feel like the Lib Dems are sort of addicted to of all of the parties in British politics, of all of these sort of terrible stars in our shitty firmament. The Lib Dems are the most obsessed with visual like very strange visual metaphors. If you remember Tim Farron, yeah, they love destroyed a wall of like blue boxes with a tiny hammer. Yeah, with Leyla Moran. Yeah, that's right. Like a little ball peen hammer. Just look at this plunking away there. It was cool.

And they did it again. Did either of you see what it was? Yeah, it was Boris's bubble. They called it big kind of like blue testicle. They burst it. Their winning candidate burst the blue testicle with like a foot long needle. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. And that's like the the only way you can get rid of those apparently in this country now because they keep reforming it. Look, so it seems as though right this is a moment for the conservatives to understand like right like that their their their leader has kind of served this purpose fine. But like also this is the Lib Dems fulfilling their eternal role in British politics after Nick Clegg, which is to be a supporting character in Tory the musical. Like this exists less as a piece of like external

political calculus and more as something that Tories can knife each other with. And yeah, simultaneously. It's funny how like I think the Lib Dems go through these kind of like it's like a fairly short life cycle of about 15 10 15 years where like they go from being a joke and then almost all the way around to being quite plausible. Now the last time they were there was like just before the 2010 general election, right? Like the kind of like the I agree with Nick period and then they like and then they fuck it or get fucked over and they go back to being completely implausible but they slowly slowly slowly creep up. And I think now we're getting towards the kind of like proto plausible era of Lib Dems again because like the Labour Party is such a joke.

And the Lib Dems have so few seats that the Lib Dems are actually able to at least formulate policy which opposes the government. Whereas Labour are so wrapped up in basically being the same as the government because that's what being a grown up is that like they kind of making the Lib Dems look good. The Lib Dems will at least occasionally go No, we don't agree with that. Actually don't do that. And of course, Davey going on TV to say actually I don't welcome the Prime Minister and getting a standing ovation. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny because they're also the party who've made this big bubble that they're going to burst with a big needle. But they're like currently the closest thing to an opposition that we have. Well, I think it's always important to remember

right that no matter what they say or it's a party that exists like the British political Washington generals, the British political sort of firmament is made up of different machines to channel, quash and destroy any kind of say material politics. This machine quashes you off. Yeah. So once, so I think it's important to not imagine that say that they're going to be any kind of like, I think, look, I'd say the concept of progressive alliance anytime it is bandied about that includes the Lib Dems is, you know, laughable because it's been very funny watching Keir Starmer try to go. Yeah, no, totally. That was like an unspoken alliance here, man. It's yeah. Oh, yeah, with Labour going down to like, like just like single digits is very funny.

They were never going to have a good time in fucking North, North, Shropshire, right? But like Scotland. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That too. But no, come on, dude, there wasn't an unspoken alliance. South Lanarkshire, North, Shropshire. Yeah, everyone just fucking hates you. Yeah. I mean, I think there's an element of like, there probably were a fair number of Labour voters who voted Lib Dem because they thought that would be like a tactically astute thing to do to fuck over the Tories. And like a Starmer people, the kind of people who like Keir Starmer do absolutely love falling for only the Lib Dems can win here, vote for the Lib Dems. And also the I think the other important thing to remember

is don't forget it's in is that no matter what the Lib Dems say in campaign mode, they'll just do whatever they want in government as we remember because of because the kind of person who would become a Lib Dem is a weasel. Yeah, a weasel, an absolute fucking weasel. So the fact that they seem like more of an opposition now is just because they are, if anything, weaselier than the Labour right, which is actually genuinely committed to its ideology of fucking sucking. I don't know if they're weaselier than the Labour right. They're kind of like, they're a bit like a Mad Hatter party. Like there's such a weird kind of conglomeration of like different types of guy. Like you've got your kind of like weird sort of

like like Vickers teaboy types like like Tim Farron and Ed Davie. And then you've got your kind of like posh eccentric like Paddy Ashton, right? And then and then you've got your kind of like straightforward Liberals like Leila Moran, like they're quite an interesting hodge podge. All the weirdest people that I've ever known in British politics have been Lib Dems. So yeah. Get drunks like fucking Charles Kennedy. I absolutely think that the first person in British Parliament to like make being Polly a big part of their political identity will be a Lib Dem for sure. Oh, 100%. And I hope it's Danny Alexander. RIP. So look, I mean, I think, you know, this when we talk about these, the whole thing of an

anti-Torre alliance, it's like, well, hang on a second, it's sort of what is that actually, because this is again, something that gets bandied about by some of the dumbest people on on in British politics, this idea that, ah, yes, there must be an anti-Torre alliance because there's Tories and not Tories, because politics is about either being mean and incompetent or being nice and competent. But like, I mean, this aids the Lib Dems sort of pretensions to seriousness too, where, you know, so long as they can sort of arm and on pretend that they're considering their options, and maybe there'll be like a power broker who can even go into coalition with Labour if need be. And it's like, no, you won't do that because you had your chance and you

did exactly the opposite. Exactly. And this is, I mean, and just instinctually. So. And the people who are pushing this are the same people who keep getting fucking like, whose job is just to get like, tricked, basically. Yeah, absolutely. This is sort of setting up a sort of like, Charlie Brown kicks the football sort of situation. And whatever I think of this, the whole sort of progressive alliance argument, I tend to think, well, hang on a sec, what, what do they actually mean? Do they mean, for example, like, devalute, do they mean, I mean, thinking about how power actually works? Do they mean thinking about sort of how the economy actually works? They mean, do they mean sort of making like fundamental

changes? Let's like, well, no, no, they mean, let's put the nice people in charge, and they're going to all get into a really durable coalition of like four or five parties, one of whom, it's going to be conditional on getting an independence vote, at least one, maybe two. Yep. And then that's all that has to happen. But the thing is, and it's, I feel like no one pushing this has really thought about what that means. I thought about what governing that means. But the thing is, right, for someone like Stammer, there is no chance of sitting on the other side of the dispatch box, except by doing that, because he has basically the politics of a brand. He's like, well, enough people like our brand, if we can combine with all the other brands,

then maybe we can join some kind of holding company, and then, you know, administer, administer the company, the country like a tech company, but be a little more competent about it than the other guys. And I mean, this sort of, it puts me in mind, actually, I was thinking about this ever since I saw that video of the French army officer doing donuts outside the refugee camp in Calais. You've just been thinking about that all day, huh? Yes, that's right. If you're not familiar with this, what happened was that a bunch of French soldiers who were on counter-terrorism duty managed to get hold of a jeep and just did donuts in a muddy field outside the refugee camp in Calais, and then immediately got the jeep stuck

in the mud. Yeah, it was doing Canadian culture. That guy was on exchange from the French Canadian army. I mean, and, you know, look, you don't know why he was doing the donuts. I mean, look, it's a French counter-terrorism officer. It's been deployed to fucking Calais. I think you can probably guess. But I was thinking about this as well, right? That if you were determined to not allow your politics to have a kind of material basis, then really what you're sort of arguing about is why you're doing the donuts. Are you doing donuts in the Thames to make people feel better about COVID? Are you doing donuts to own the refugees? Are you doing donuts to protest that McDonald's makes you wear a mask? Are you doing donuts in the parking lot of like,

I don't know, Fox News because you don't like Tucker Carlson? It's just this, it's all the same donuts if your politics has no material basis. And the Progressive Alliance is just more sort of talk of, well, we're going to do, we're going to do good donuts in parliament square, right? I don't know. That's what I've been thinking about all day. Yeah, we're going to get the ferry and we're going to do donut in honor of Captain Tom. Yeah, but we're going to do donuts in honor of how Captain Tom brought us together rather than in honor of how Captain Tom made us feel good to be British. That's the difference. It was killed by British Airways. But you get what I mean. It's all just donuts, but you feel differently doing them. Yeah, it's trivial,

yeah, yeah. So I mean, that's why I think the real number to think about in North Shropshire isn't Lib Dem or conservative. I think labor is instructive and very funny, but it's under 50%. This is a highly politicized, extremely charged environment where the narrative is everyone cares, everyone's desperate to get rid of Boris Johnson. This is their chance to register a protest against him. Apathy wins. Yeah, no one gives a fuck. I mean, that's what we've been saying the whole time, right? The media have been out in force being like, well, the Christmas party is surely the final straw. It's like, no, no one cares. No one's interested. No one gives a fuck. And I mean, look, the thing is, I think that it certainly

can be, it certainly can be made to give a fuck, but you're sort of energizing people who kind of already have a, they're already politically aligned. It's like diminishing returns, right? All the people who it could have been like sufficiently exercising to like vote have already been thoroughly like, you know, they've had this like thrown in their faces. Like there's nothing further to be gained politically from like continuing this Christmas party shit, other than to build support in fucking WhatsApp groups of Tory MPs. Oh, you want to talk about WhatsApp groups? Maybe over, but those people are still barking. You want to talk about WhatsApp groups, Alice? I very much want to talk about WhatsApp groups.

Let's talk about Steve Bay. We had some leaks from a WhatsApp group, where are the fancifully entitled clean global Brexit? Perfect. No notes. Yes, which has a shitload of Tory MPs in it, and which had a bit of a sort of drama in it. Riley, do you want to read these transcripts that we have here? I do, but I want to say this really gives, before I do, I want to say this gives credence to my theory that the collapse of the British and American sort of systems of doing politics that we've become familiar with is following the Western and Eastern Roman Empire pattern,

where in the West, in America, there's just the sort of sudden collapse of the state's ability to sort of do things. As we talked about with Patrick Wyman many times, this idea that of just the pullback of authority and administration, allowing more things to just be left to be determined locally, all this stuff, just a society that is turning itself off quite rapidly. And then in the East... That will happen when you start thinking about Steve Bay. In the East, in the UK, we have just dozens of eunuchs all knifing one another because of 13 different plots that all of them are involved in. Oh, absolutely.

So many plots and not a bollock between them. Sort of WhatsApp slapbites, which is great. Can I say just off the top about what I love whenever there's a screenshot from any Tory MP WhatsApp group? Is how fucking boomer it all is? What's funny is you don't know who has taken these screenshots, but these screenshots are almost an own of them because they're the one with the incredibly boomer WhatsApp style. They've spelt Nadine Doris' name wrong, and they've done that thing, boomers do, where they've saved her name with a space at the end.

So there's too big of a gap between Nadine and Doris when her name comes up. She's Nadine Space Space Doris. Yeah, that's right, Doris. Nadine Dolby the house. All right. So basically, this is all of us. So Nipsis Tarios Marcus Fish is talking about the retirement of Ostiarios Frost. Lord Frost, the great minister who's resigned in a way to try and shaft Boris Johnson. You know, ahead of having to do an embarrassing U-turn about the Brexit deal,

he negotiated and also to try and like, you know, protest authoritarian COVID measures and not doing enough fucking supply side economics. Yeah, exactly. So Marcus Fish says Frost is a hero and 100% right on this. The whole point of Brexit is radical supply side reform and moving away from the EU model. Yet ministers are happy to just give hard one power put in their hands to achieve this to officials who will do the opposite. Looking forward to seeing that fucking beamed in like 72,000 point font on the side of the house as a parliament by fucking led by donkeys.

Yeah, people walking by just like, oh, the point was radical change. Great. Good. Well, thank you. The point was to do supply side economics. Why didn't anyone fucking tell me this? Yeah, it's amazing the extent to which these people don't even understand their own electorate. Incredible. Nadine Space Base Doris, keeper of the Imperial Vestiments and also holding three poisoned knives, one of which she's not aware the handle is actually poisoned.

And to be fair to Nadine Doris, the woman who basically gave the Prime Minister COVID. So we've got to credit her with something. An unwitting pawn in a scheme to assassinate the Prime Minister. She had a bloody good go. And no, absolutely says the hero is the Prime Minister who delivered Brexit. I'm aware, as someone said today, that regicide is in the DNA of the conservative party. Yeah, it's true. Regicide is in the DNA of the conservative party. They love killing their leaders, but a bit of loyalty to the person who won an 83 majority

and delivered Brexit wouldn't go amiss at which point she was promptly removed by Steve Baker. My favorite is Steve Baker going enough is enough. To close quite tandem, Nadine Doris Space Base and Boutere Patientia Nostra. It's this thing that you see. The thing to understand is that there is this fracture that's happening in the conservative party because there's always a fracture that's happening in the conservative party because for the last, I don't know, do you want to call it 30, 20, 40,

depending on when you want to start your counter years, 200 years? Yeah. I mean, I think I tend to think- No, it's Europe that gave them the real brain madness. And that's the sort of thing that we're talking about here is that there's an eternal faction of plotters within the conservative party who like, always, always want to drive it suicidally rightwards in order to do more supply side shit. There's sort of your cameranism on one hand, which is we want to do some evil, but in a sort of self-perpetuating way, which has something to do with the business of governing.

A sustainable evil. Exactly. And then, of course, we saw cameranism incinerate itself at the hands of guys like this who are like, no, you have to do 1973 Chile. That's the only kind of economy that I want to live in. And if it takes absolutely fucking everything else to do it, then I'm quite happy. Yeah. There's a faction of the conservative party that will not be happy until there are people being thrown out of a helicopter, which was built by British Leyland, which has been resurrected. And therefore, there's no point chucking someone out of the helicopter because the helicopter is about to crash. If you want to leave no loose ends, a British Leyland helicopter

is perfect. The fucking like English sparkling wine Isis here did give us... A honeymoon gift you can get that says, I'm not sure about this man. Did give us another sort of very led by donkey screenshot because immediately after kicking Nadine Doris from the group chat, Steve Baker says, the majority was one for many reasons, among them two were critical. One, the deal Boris voted for was rejected. Two, someone brackets him, but not him, persuaded Farage not to run against incumbents. If Boris hadn't benefited from both, we would be on the other benches.

And look, the other thing about Steve Baker to remember is he's a fucking idiot. Oh, yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But I think the thing to look at there, right? There's a number of things to look at. Number one, I think this, it's absolutely true that I think the conservative party is driven by its complete fucking lunatics. And I think that's true. I also think that it's not helpful to say, fucking Jabat on nutcase. And like to a certain extent, I think also we have to consider them to be like, contiguous with UK or fucking reform UK, whoever the fuck that like wing nut party of the day are, because they're totally like manipulatable and like exchangeable between each other.

But I think the thing that the thing to remember, right, is it doesn't mean that the ones that aren't these people are somehow good and govern differently without them. The ones who aren't these people desperately need these people so that their project has momentum. It's not that these are people being dragged away by wild horses. This is a cart and a horse. It's these are the horses that are taking the others who are the cart towards their survival objective. It's two guys both trying to take each other hostage at the same time. All too happy to do it because they're somehow in some kind of a scheme that makes them both because they both have insurance that's complimentary. Anyway, look, I think this is

the way I see this, right? This sort of, as you say, English sparkling white Isis it's the same kind of contradiction resolver that happens to give us vigilantism, right? Where there are cynical demands, high profile demands by think tanks and papers and pundits and politicians that create a right-wing utopian vision that would only be available if authority will simply act a little bit more. The black banners of Khorasan are going to like fucking ride and take over the new Rome and ranger over mums will like drive over big trenches of into like Britain processes. But I think it's genuinely like it's this mismatch of what is being demanded in a quite kind of frantic fashion by respectable quote unquote

opinion formers on the right. Again, all of the liberals who are just again taken in by these people, gladly taken in by these people, which has this sense that if only they would allow, I don't know, if only they'd bring back hanging, if only they'd allow you to shoot, if the police could shoot protesters on site. Whatever red meat thing, it could be fucking anything and it will be. Yeah, or it's usually a constitutional change. It is if they bring back breaking people on the wheel, that's my new policy. And like what the Conservative Party's history is, is a succession of people who are normal enough to get to leadership level, but are also deluded enough to think that they can ride these fucking nutcases like a horse

to power. And so the next thing is going to be fucking, I don't know, Percy Patel bringing back hanging after Boris Johnson gets ousted. And it's like, I mean, you know, what can you even say by this point? I mean, I think it's prediction is a mugs game. And I think it's hard to predict who's going to be. Yeah, it's not going to be Freddie Patel. It's going to be the fucking Chancellor of the Ex-Jackie. He's going to do like a business friendly supply side thing that's going to have just enough red meat. Yeah, no, that's my prediction. Well, the thing is it will until it won't because this fundamental dynamic of the politics in this country being propelled by wild horses, right word. And if you want to, you know, not go with

the wild horses, then of course, again, you're going to be kicked from the wagon by an immune system. Well, here's where I sort of disagree. And that like, okay, this dialectic of like the two guys fucking holding each other at gunpoint, like it's very stupid. We agree on that. But like, it's fucking working for them. And it has done for a long time. And the idea that like, oh, well, at some point it has to implode, well, says who? Like, at what point is does Britain just become too fast, too dumb, too loud for it to be sustainable? Well, it only implodes in the in the micro sense, right? It blows up in the face of the current incumbents of the Conservative Party, but the party itself soldiers on it's just that like,

the Regicide becomes like exponentially more frequent. It doesn't cause them to lose any elections or anything. And just like, like, they get into this kind of like Mad Max type situation where every leader of the Conservative Party is just like screaming, witness me spraying the shit on their mouth and then dying instantly before being replaced by someone identical. Yeah, it's because it's I don't think that this necessarily unstable. In fact, it's a very stable system. It's why it's so hard to dislodge, except by imitating a part of it and trying to slip into where the Conservative Party is by being shaped exactly like that. I look forward to Prime Minister Otto, Prime Minister Galbert.

Yeah. Perspasion. We're going to have them all. I think personally that this is why this is why Keir Starman has to keep welcoming them. There's always a new guy. Absolutely. I welcome the Prime Minister. Hello, we've not spoken before. At this point, he's gonna there's gonna be a new Prime Minister by the time he's finished welcoming them. Yeah, that's right. He's just gonna be saying welcome all day. I mean, Britain, Britain 2100 is still an incredibly conservative country. We just have four Prime Ministers a second. That would be cool. At some point, we're gonna have to have some kind of quantum of Prime Ministers. Yeah, we have a sort of extremely like fast stream of Prime Ministers. It's more of a collective consciousness, really.

And look, so this is where I think that we could sort of circling back to this talk of like the Progressive Alliance, the electoral pact between the Greens, the Lib Dems and sort of Labour, if it's right-wing enough, is why it's why it's sort of so naive. It's because it doesn't reckon with all of the other organs of government of this country that have created the dynamic that we just described as the stable one. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it absolutely hasn't done that. All right, can we talk about Nick Clegg? I want to talk about Nick Clegg. Nicholas Clegg. Nicholas Clegg. I agree, isn't it? I have a little drop here, a little amuse-bouche for you, if you'd like to hear it, presented without context. If I'm lifting your head off because I'm

drinking my coffee and this wretched headset is too bulky for me to drink my coffee up, moving the headset so I don't think I'm raining my neck weirdly. I mean, I think that's quite funny, but I think it was weirder that he followed it up by saying, that the headset was a little bit tight. Wrestling with a headphone cable. That's the noise I make when I do that. Didn't that sound great, just like hanging out and two people hanging out in real life? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was awesome. I particularly like when Nick Clegg said, this wretched headset. It's very very Colin first addiction on this wretched headset. It's like something. That is like something a Tory backbench MP would say on a Zoom call.

There's a newfangled business. I love the metaverse, man. It's so cool. I love being in the Nintendo Wii fucking financial times office. So look, this is from an FT article by Henry Mans who interviews Nick Clegg entitled My Trip into the Metaverse with Facebook Defender-in-Chief Nick Clegg. And indeed the video of them actually talking does start with them having a difficult and stupid time with all of the dumb bullshit that makes the metaverse the metaverse. Yeah, everyone's constantly vibrating in the metaverse. This is something we learned from this video. Also, it's just very, it's just very funny every time you get reminded that Nick Clegg works for Facebook now. And the fact that like, I don't think Nick Clegg realizes

why he works for Facebook. I think Facebook know why he does, but he doesn't. I think that's going to be sort of the crux of this segment is Nick Clegg's role as sort of professional piss pig. Yeah, exactly. They just send Nick Clegg out. Like all the guys on the Facebook board are like watching this and laughing at Nick Clegg. Like that's what's going on. You think there's like a carry situation like Nick Clegg can be? They have a metaverse that's actually as good as they say it is. Nick Clegg has never been allowed to see it. They sent him out with the joke one. He's spiritually a lived em. He's managed to maintain his role in the coalition, but just by working for Facebook of just being the guy who

like carries the can for everything. Weirdly, that is exactly what the article points out. This is not so different. It's that Nick Clegg goes into these impossible to win scenarios, gets completely fucking humiliated, and then turns around to like everyone he knows and journalists and stuff. And is like, I achieved some things. Great. Facebook are doing a 10p charge on plastic bags. Yeah, the policy for moderate reform within the system triumphs again. This is in fact sort of the thrust of the article. It's Nick Clegg trying to make this case that he is somehow through his fucking sophomoric sort of philosophy of empowered individuals

communicating and making choices to change institutions for the liberal or whatever from within. Kind of naive idea that's held by powerful people. So it doesn't matter if it's naive or cynical, the results are still... Changing the police from the inside, but instead it's Facebook is a very funny objective. And so he says, and basically right, he joined Facebook to be their government. I think he thinks he joined because of his Rolodex of Contacts and the EU. I think he actually joined to just be a little piss pig who gets like shamed in public. Yeah, they told him that they needed a lobbyist. But you'll notice that Facebook or Matter has not gotten any serious lobbying done because nobody's taking

Nick Clegg's calls because everyone identifies him as just this kind of like, you know, piss pig figure. Well, they have in Europe, but it's not through him. It's through like funding think tanks and so on. It's not through him making some calls. Yeah, the Nick Clegg Institute. That said, I would fucking love that job. Like he just, his job is to do nothing, right? Oh yeah. And he probably gets paid like a million dollars. It's more than Satan to do this. I would sell every single one of you and every principle I have to do Nick Clegg's job. No, Milo, Milo, a million dollars. Someone who works for Nick Clegg gets two and a half million dollars. Someone at his level

gets about 50. Amazing. Yeah, incredible. Yeah, cool. Look, look, look, if Nick Clegg, if you're ever tired of being a piss pig, I will do that job. But also do that job for six months. The deal that he's made, right, is you do the piss pig thing. You soak up all of this abuse and in return you get a, you know, a small palace on Mars where everybody's going to live when earth becomes uninhabitable, right? Yeah, no, no, no. Nick like, Nick Clegg gets to like live in Mark Zuckerberg's doghouse. And to be fair, it's a very nice doghouse. Oh yeah, of course. But everyone else gets, it's, it's that he, he sleeps at the foot of the bed or maybe he's like buried with Zuckerberg. It beats like, you know, the rain select slums of Neo-Dolston or whatever. But like

Nick Clegg is eating the finest kibble available to mankind. Why did you find an interview of Nick Clegg just doing ciphers thing in the matrix where he's like eating a really like raw steak? So no, this is, this is the article starts. I find the, in the meeting room, I find the one time deputy PM of the UK is now a wrinkle free avatar with the word Nick hovering above it. And then this is going to set the tone for the rest of the article. Nick Clegg says, can we get the sneering and mockery out of the way please? That's how Nick opens the sexual encounter. You say hello to this man. He just flinches from you. It's almost sad. He's like fucking reek by this point, you know?

Yeah. He's that kid at school who's so bullied that like he just, he just avoids everyone instinctively. Sadly, we don't have any trousers on. We don't even have legs to quote the Microsoft computer science. That's a good reason not to wear trousers to be fair. They've short-circuited that one, baby. To quote one Microsoft computer scientist, Meta's vision of the metaverse has so far not resolved basic issues of geometry. It's so bad. It's terrible. It's PlayStation Home, if you remember. Yeah. It's just, yeah. Except PlayStation Home, as as a fan of the show reminded me, actually looked better than this. PlayStation Home, they had legs. You could wear trousers in PlayStation Home, you know?

They haven't rolled out trousers in the metaverse yet. No, it says that we're going. We won't need trousers. The Clegg is undeterred. He holds his meetings with his team every Monday morning like this. Quote, I do feel like I do feel like sitting like I'm sitting next to you. But is this believable? Clegg's facial expression is computer generated, so I have limited insight, which again, that's like, have they never thought about that? Like you press button to smile. What the fuck? How's that going to fucking work? Yeah. Like, how is this better than video conferencing? This is what they can't answer you.

Well, so that you can become a VTuber to alleviate your crippling gender dysphoria, or so that you can avoid the vicious sneering and mockery that everyone who speaks to Nick Clegg apparently inflicts on him. Was he like the only person who was in the focus group for designing this? He was like, look, I just want something where people will finally stop sneering and mocking me. Yeah. Like we focused us to this with Nick Clegg and a selection of random British people, and every single one of them started doing Ben Kingsley bits from Sexy Beast at him. Since joining Meta, Clegg has been its chief diplomat. It's corporate shock absorber,

because his role involves supervising. It's crash death dummy. Corporate shock absorber. Okay. A fair play to Henry Manse for that one. That's good. It's just, yeah, it's a look. Nick Clegg is, to Facebook, what like the skis are in a pontoon plane. Just smashing. Smashing his face into the ground. Nick Clegg, Facebook's ablative heat shield. So it involves supervising communications, content policies, lobbying, etc. He let, the one main decision he was able to lead, because most of the article is about how impotent he's been, was to quote, was to suspend Donald Trump for praising rioters

after the U.S. election. But when a whistleblower, Francis Howell, when we spoke about her, leaked documents showing that the company had realized what a negative impact it had on mental health, bureaucracy, all that, Clegg went on TV to say, no, it doesn't. And also banning Trump from Facebook was a lot less impactful than banning him from Twitter. That was the thing that like really damaged him in terms of social media. Well, also, it's like he didn't, he didn't really ask the thing, I'll never forgive them. They took, they did take away some fantastic tweets. But on the other hand, they took away his ability to like coordinate a, you know,

a bloodless coup or smotherings through like weird boomer posts. I don't know. I think, I mean, look, I don't know. Look, it helps a lot of people get to work on time. It's impossible to say whether or not it's bad. I would really, look, I've often said this, I just want him to, I want to hear his opinion on everything except politics. Everything. There's nothing I don't want to hear his opinion about except politics. Lying to Joe Biden's tweets. What have been awesome. That'd be a lot of fun. Donald Trump simply replies to Joe Biden's

tweet with like ratio, right? I think that would have been fun. I think, and also like, I don't know, Biden's basically decided he can't do anything. So, fuck it. Who cares? Like at this point, I don't know what, why bother? Do the donuts. Let me see him do the donuts in the little fucking car. I'm, yeah, exactly. I'm just imagining. Donald Trump, French counter-terrorism officer. It's Nick Clegg, like applying for this role at Facebook and then him like asking what the job involves. And they're like, are you familiar with the Dubrovka theater siege? Because

in, if you, if you take that as an analogy, you are kind of like the terrorists and the hostages. And we are kind of like the Spetsnaz. So, they say one former senior meta employee just described this as Zuckerberg and Sandberg wanted a front person to take all the beatings. Now that's leaning into the beating. Some kind of boy to be whipped. Yeah, exactly. And also like, look, the whole thing about banning Trump, like, I don't know, if you, if you think that the Trump ban and the January 6th stuff was serious, which I, I don't really, then like, it's debatable, but I think a lot of people make

it more serious than it actually was. Sure. And then it's like mostly what, what Clegg did was just follow the consensus of what got done. I can't, I don't know if he actually, I think it's very funny, like, Nick Clegg's the least interesting part of this. What's more interesting to me is Mark Zuckerberg being so dear in the headlights that Nick Clegg provides, like, decisive leadership. And then decisive leadership to basically follow the crowd. Like, I think maybe, like, that comes down to also Facebook's audience being different, all that stuff. Oh, when I say decisive leadership, I'm being like, comparative.

Yeah, of course. Anyway, so Clegg says he also wanted to be certain that he would have the power, quote, within the company to make the changes that I think are necessary. Which so far have involved banning Trump when everyone else also did it, and they're doing nothing else. That's great. Thank you, Nick. I was gonna reform the system from the inside, but then when I got inside of it, I just fine, actually. Yeah, everyone, everyone agreed with Nick about banning Trump. Which is why they did it before he did.

So he says, the, the problem is that during Clegg, during Clegg's time, Meta's reputation has not improved at all. One idea that Clegg's team considered was, and we talked about this, actually, on the episode where we talked about Spotify's AI defense company, right? Clegg, one idea that Clegg's team considered was fact-checking politicians in autocracies, but not democracies. But then no, no workable definition of democracy could be found. I love the idea of giving Putin like a Pinocchio rating. That's so funny to me, just like, uh, uh, people of Russia,

I think someone's been telling some porky pie. You know, I think he didn't find those amphorae himself. Yeah, like, I certainly wouldn't vote for him after that. The people of Russia should engage in some democracy by not voting for Vladimir Putin. But also, like, ah, yes, we're gonna, it's Facebook against the autocracies, but we just can't define what they are. It's weird how our definition of autocracies just always keeps seeming to line up with countries that NATO is opposed to, except we can't do that, obviously. And so it's almost the same problem of, um,

Mohammed bin Salman getting a zero Pinocchio rating. It's the same. Yeah, that's right. Didn't lie. Told the truth that I was telling the truth. But, um, uh, it's like, it's, it's, it's such a sophomoric idea as well. Just fucking so stupid. It's just like, yeah, we're gonna fact check. We're gonna fact check politicians and autocracies if only we could define it. It's a pure, it's, it's a pure Dutton Krueger vibes based way of trying to govern something. Remember when Twitter was trying to like, they hadn't sort of got themselves ready to

ban Trump yet, but they tried to like, neuter him by every time he posted something like, uh, you know, stop the count, thieving Democrats, steal the election or whatever, they would put a fucking little like informational box underneath it that's just like, uh, this isn't true. Like that's so fucking weak. And Facebook doing the exact same thing. And then not even being able to do it is just that much more pathetic. Well, so he's, he up, explaining this problem, he says to Henry Mantz, if you or any FT readers have gotten any neat answers about how on earth we're meant to deal with political speech generally, please put it on a postcard. We're acutely aware that

I think Matt Christman had one on the election night stream. We're acutely aware that as a private company, we don't have legitimacy to act as referees, yet that that's exactly what we end up doing because the politicians themselves don't come up with the rules of the road. And it's like, um, well, I guess that's a question begs for more rules, right? But also he's like, oh, well, I guess that's a question for the philosophers. Let's not ask how we got into this position or whether or not we should even be in this position. It's a given that we are, and sorry, I guess we have zero democratic accountability, but we're just going to create the rules of the road, so to speak anyway, because who else is going to

do it? By the way, also we made the road and forced everyone onto it. It's just, it's just such, for someone who likes to sort of, like, look, I mean, the scorpion is going to sting the frog, right? I'd like the scorpion to not sting the frog. I'll sort of do everything in my power to try to prevent the scorpion from stinging the frog, but I don't blame it. Nick's leg was hired as the frog. Yeah, that's nice. That's right. But look, I don't blame the scorpion for stinging the frog. Like, you understand why sort of meta does what it does. It's in its nature. And then to just get this guy, this guy who believes that by dint of how much he understood John Stuart Mill, he is going to be

able to come up with exactly the right rule, right, that alters the fundamental constitution of this thing, which is the monetization of interaction that is realized, that it can juice interaction by sort of making the stakes seem infinite and into making interaction being allowing it to be frictionless, which is just given rise to these, let allow a million different scams to bloom, whether that sort of Ponzi schemes or, you know, allowing a kind of not creating right-wing politics, certainly as again, I think some liberals believe, but certainly providing it with its dream sort of channels of dissemination to people and making it that much more conspiratorial and that much more virial and also crucially enabling boomers and Gen X to get into copy

pasta shit that we were all into when we were like 11. Absolutely. So that's cool. Yeah. Like, if that's kind of, it did give us that one Facebook group where everybody posts like they pretend to be boomers. And I think that's quite charming. Yeah, to be fair, that is quite fun. Yeah. So it says another paragraph. Thank you, Sandra, and all caps. Another paragraph. It shouldn't be funny, but it really is. Joe Biden's electoral victory last year generated some hope within Metta that Clegg could become the company's president whisperer. Despite some progressive stylings in 2020, Biden spent most of his career in the center lauding consensus building.

But in the White House, he's largely delegated tech policy and Metta has struggled to find. In the White House, he's largely like sleeping. Yeah, sort of staring emotionally at Damasco paper. Yeah, just stroking the back of Joe Biden's head and going like in the White House. I mean, that's pretty much what his like Jesus stuff has to be doing most days. Yeah. And just be like the role of president whisperer has already been taken because our man is sundowning in there. Yeah. Joe, Joe, you're peeing in the cupboard again. Joe Biden was quoted as saying, oh hell, man. In the White House, he has largely delegated tech policy, which is true to like

one of the few, I think, you know, could be worse things about his administration, which is at least so far the pugnacious noises he's making on antitrust. And Metta, the article goes on. Yeah, the pugnacious noises he's making to the wallpaper. The pugnacious noises that Jonathan Price dropped, please. And Metta. Yeah, the pugnacious noises. Strong words there from the president. That's right. The article goes on, has struggled to find a well-known Democrat to oversee its lobbying operations in Washington. Quote, Facebook is simply too unpopular among most Democrats

that are a message to even be heard, says one lobbyist. Nick Clegg is not going to be able to change that. And it's like, yeah, because it's his role to get up and get yelled at, and then go and hopefully gets enough money that he's going to be one of the people who gets to live on Mars. Yeah, cool. So this is, wait, Nick Clegg's got this all right. His wife is hot. He's making like $50 million a year. He's going to get to live on Mars. He's going to get to live, like, period. Yeah, he just has to be like slightly pathetic. Like, yeah, whatever, my life is pathetic. Who cares? So it concludes. We should all fucking sell out. I could be Charlotte Clymer by now.

Do you think Charlotte Clymer is making $50 million though? Social Clymer. No, but I think she's doing a fuck of a lot better than I am. The problem is, for people who hate Nick Clegg and hate the coalition, this is Nick Clegg talking. They're going to say, they're going to say that anyway. So what am I supposed to do? Am I a morally feeble human being? Am I so out of touch? No. His avatar seems to fill up with a familiar exasperation. And then he adds, I just don't live my life according to what people who disagree with me most think. Oh, oh, yeah. I wake up every morning and I'm so thankful to the haters for making me who I am.

I love that. Just being like that. Just Nick Clegg, who just British people, just think back to what he has done since he's had the power to do anything. Asking himself as he's morally feeble, tighter benefit sanctions in turn, in exchange for a plastic bag charge. Again, whether or not he is cynical, mendacious, or just a fucking coward. I think he describes the best himself, morally feeble. Yeah. Morally feeble. There he is. Nick Clegg, psyching himself up to go and get yelled at by a congressional committee by listening to Soldier Boy Tellem. That's right.

No, this interview really has the vibe of Nick Clegg sitting alone listening to Creep. Oh, yeah. Creep, like 2025 re-release that's about being on Mars. Yeah, that's right. I'm in a doghouse, but it's better than being on Earth. Anyway, look, I think it's time for us to sign off in the all, in the all sign off process. Yeah, the most traditional way that we do this. Amazing thing every episode. Just like every episode in China every day. Listening to Jonathan Price make kung fu noises. All right. I think that's going to be it for me, and I think that's going to be

it for at least me before Christmas. Yes. I was stalling because I was opening up my calendar and I accidentally said... We're going to spend the Christmas period working on our fucking like Flanders and Swan tribute. Yes, it's us and Jonathan Price. Perfect. Right. So look, this is the last you're going to hear from me before January, but hey, guess what? I'll see you in January, and the rest of these jokers are going to see you before that, especially Nate. We'll be even more of the Joker by that, and I'm sure.

Oh, absolutely. That's right. Right. So from me, happy Christmas and holidays and other such things to everyone. Yeah. Yeah. Happy Saturnalia. I'm going to say happy holidays because I want to be inclusive and also trigger the Conservatives. That's right. I'm under arrest. Milo is also under arrest, but that's because it's Saturnalia and the slaves are kings and the kings are slaves. These days, you say it's Saturnalia, you get locked up by the vigiles and thrown in the classroom.

This country's people gone to the dogs. Yeah. What do you say? Oh, don't like it. There's the portal. Yeah, that's right. Don't like it. There's a vomitarium. Yeah. What I'm saying is if Kate Odi Elder was in charge, it'd be a different fucking story. It's sort of right out. Wait, wait, wait. So this is this is this character that you're doing right now is like a kind of staunch Republican. Yeah. Yeah. He's like an old school Republic guy. All right. All right. All right. Look, I'm going to end the podcast now.

Happy holidays, everybody, from me and us. From our home to yours. They should bring back Sulla. He'd fuck him right up. Yeah. A graca, a couple of tarts. That's right. Yeah. I tell you what, if the woke Raleigh came face to face with a prescription list, they'd change their tune. That's it. Okay. Bye, everybody. Bye.