1. Sir Nicholas William Peter Clegg was born on 7 January 1967 and is a British retired politician and media executive who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2015 and as Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2007 to 2015.
Nick Clegg was Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam from 2005 to 2017.
Nick Clegg worked as a journalist for the Financial Times before becoming a Member of the European Parliament in 1999.
Nick Clegg supported reduced taxes, electoral reform, cuts on defence spending and an increased focus on environmental issues.
The Conservative Party, which failed to receive a majority, formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and Nick Clegg was appointed by Conservative leader David Cameron to serve as his Deputy Prime Minister.
In 2016, following a referendum in which a majority supported leaving the European Union, Nick Clegg returned to the Liberal Democrat frontbench, concurrently serving as Spokesperson for Exiting the European Union and for International Trade from July 2016 to June 2017.
Nick Clegg was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2018 New Year Honours for political and public service.
Nick Clegg was promoted to president for global affairs in 2022.
Nick Clegg announced he would step down from the role and leave Meta in 2025.
Nick Clegg was born in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, the third of four children of Hermance van den Wall Bake and Nicholas Peter Clegg, chairman of United Trust Bank and a former trustee of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation.
Nick Clegg's paternal grandmother, Baroness Kira von Engelhardt, of Smolensk, was a Baltic-German noblewoman, niece of Moura Budberg, adventuress and suspected double agent, and the granddaughter of attorney general of the Imperial Russian Senate, Ignatiy Platonovich Zakrevsky.
Nick Clegg's mother is Dutch and was interned, along with her family, by the Japanese military in Batavia in the Dutch East Indies during the Second World War.
Nick Clegg met Clegg's father during a visit to England in 1956, and they married on 1 August 1959.
Nick Clegg was educated at two private schools: at Caldicott School in Farnham Royal in South Buckinghamshire, where he was joint Head Prefect in 1980, and later at Westminster School in Central London.
When news of the incident was reported during his time as Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson, Nick Clegg said he was "not proud" of it.
Nick Clegg was arrested and not formally charged, but performed a type of community service.
Nick Clegg spent a gap year working as a skiing instructor in Austria, before going on to Cambridge in 1986, where he studied Archaeology and Anthropology at Robinson College.
Nick Clegg was active in the student theatre, acting in a production of The Normal Heart under the director Sam Mendes.
Nick Clegg was captain of his college's tennis team, and campaigned for the human rights organisation Survival International.
Nick Clegg spent the summer of 1989 as an office junior in Postipankki bank in Helsinki.
Nick Clegg has maintained he has "no recollection of that whatsoever".
Nick Clegg graduated with an upper second class honours degree in social anthropology.
Nick Clegg then moved to New York City, where he worked as an intern under Christopher Hitchens at The Nation, a progressive liberal magazine, where he fact-checked Hitchens's articles.
Nick Clegg next moved to Brussels, where he worked alongside Guy Spier for six months as a trainee in the G24 coordination unit which delivered aid to the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Nick Clegg is an alumnus of the "Mozart Promotion" of the College of Europe.
In 1993, Nick Clegg won the inaugural Financial Times David Thomas Prize, in remembrance of an FT journalist killed on assignment in Kuwait in 1991.
Nick Clegg was later sent to Hungary, where he wrote articles about the mass privatisation of industries in the former communist bloc.
Nick Clegg took up a post at the European Commission in April 1994, working in the TACIS aid programme to the former Soviet Union.
Nick Clegg has written extensively, publishing and contributing to a large number of pamphlets and books.
Nick Clegg wrote a controversial pamphlet for the Centre for European Reform advocating devolution and evolution of the European Union, and contributed to the 2004 Orange Book, where he offered market liberal solutions for reform of European institutions.
Nick Clegg co-authored a pamphlet with Duncan Brack arguing for a wholesale reform of world trade rules to allow room for a greater emphasis on development, internationally binding environmental treaties, and parliamentary democracy within the WTO system.
In 1998, Nick Clegg was selected as the lead Liberal Democrat candidate for the European Parliament in the East Midlands constituency; the following year, Paddy Ashdown was first to tip him as a politician to watch.
Nick Clegg worked extensively during his time as an MEP to support the party in the region, not least in Chesterfield where Paul Holmes was elected as MP in 2001.
Nick Clegg helped persuade Conservative MEP Bill Newton Dunn to defect to the Liberal Democrats, with Newton Dunn subsequently succeeding him as MEP for the East Midlands.
Nick Clegg was made Trade and Industry spokesman for the European Liberal Democrat and Reform group.
Nick Clegg decided to leave Brussels in 2002, arguing in an article in The Guardian newspaper that the battle to persuade the public of the benefits of Europe was being fought at home, not in Brussels.
In 2004, Nick Clegg explained to the Select Committee on European Union that the aim of MEPs like himself, who had been active in the debate on the EU's negotiating mandate, was to obtain the right to ratify any major WTO deal entered into by the European Union.
Nick Clegg served on Charles Kennedy's policy review, "Meeting the Challenge", and the "It's About Freedom" working parties.
The article was dusted down during the 2010 general election campaign when the Daily Mail interpreted the article as being a "Nazi slur on Britain" and Nick Clegg had begun to feel the full heat of the British tabloid press following his success during the first leaders' debate.
On leaving the European Parliament, Nick Clegg joined political lobbying firm GPlus in April 2004 as a fifth partner:.
Nick Clegg worked on GPlus clients including The Hertz Corporation and British Gas.
Nick Clegg took up a part-time teaching position in the politics department of the University of Sheffield, combining it with ongoing EU consultancy work with GPlus.
Nick Clegg gave a series of seminar lectures in the international relations Department of the University of Cambridge.
Nick Clegg served as treasurer and secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on National Parks, a particular interest given that his constituency includes part of the Peak District National Park.
Nick Clegg was quick to rule himself out however instead declaring his support for Menzies Campbell ahead of his former colleague in the European Parliament Chris Huhne, with Campbell going on to win the ballot.
Nick Clegg had been a signatory to the letter circulated by Vince Cable prior to Kennedy's resignation, which stated his opposition to working under Kennedy's continued leadership.
Nick Clegg has campaigned for prison reform, a liberal approach to immigration, and defended the Human Rights Act against ongoing attacks from across the political spectrum.
Nick Clegg caused a degree of controversy when, at the Liberal Democrat party conference in 2007, he admitted his leadership ambitions to journalists at a fringe event.
The admission followed a period of increased media speculation about Sir Menzies Campbell's leadership, which the admission by Nick Clegg did nothing to reduce and resulted in a rebuke by some of his frontbench colleagues.
The BBC's Political Editor Nick Robinson stated the election would be a two-horse race between Clegg and Chris Huhne who had stood against Campbell in the 2006 election.
On Friday 19 October 2007, Nick Clegg launched his bid to become leader of the Liberal Democrats.
Nick Clegg was appointed to the Privy Council on 30 January 2008, and affirmed his membership on 12 March 2008.
Nick Clegg has stated that he feels "a profound antagonism for prejudice of all sorts".
Nick Clegg declared his priorities as: defending civil liberties; devolving the running of public services to parents, pupils and patients; and protecting the environment.
Nick Clegg resigned as the leader of the Liberal Democrats after the 2015 general election.
Nick Clegg said the results were "immeasurably more crushing and unkind than he feared".
Nick Clegg was succeeded by Tim Farron after a leadership election.
In March 2008, GQ magazine ran with an interview conducted by Piers Morgan in which Nick Clegg admitted to sleeping with "no more than 30" women.
On 5 March 2008, Nick Clegg suffered a real test following the resignation of three of his front bench team.
In November 2008, Nick Clegg suffered more allegations of difficulties with the front bench following an article in the Daily Mirror that reported that Nick Clegg had criticised senior members of his front bench whilst on a plane journey.
Nick Clegg told the BBC's Politics Show that "a lot of it is, frankly, fiction".
Nick Clegg rejected an appeal from Cameron for their two parties to work together.
Nick Clegg argued that the Conservatives were totally different from his party, and that the Lib Dems were the true "progressives" in UK politics.
Nick Clegg became the first party leader in modern political history to call for a Speaker of the House of Commons to resign, describing then-Speaker Michael Martin, following his handling of the expenses scandal, as a defender of the status quo and an obstacle to the reform of Parliament.
Shortly ahead of the election, Nick Clegg was asked about his own expenses by Andrew Neil of the BBC.
Nick Clegg allegedly claimed the full amount permissible under the Additional Cost Allowance, including claims for food, gardening and redecorating his second home.
Nick Clegg aimed to modernise the Liberal Democrat Party at the same time as maintaining its traditions of political and philosophical liberalism.
Nick Clegg campaigned to cut spending on defence projects such as Eurofighter as well as the UK Trident programme.
Nick Clegg added that it was "the kind of thing people want this country to do".
In reply, Nick Clegg said that he had always maintained that the party with the most seats and the most votes should have the right to seek to govern.
Nick Clegg was made Minister for Constitutional and Political Reform, which was a key point for the Liberal Democrats during the creation of the coalition.
On 5 July 2010, Nick Clegg unveiled plans to have fewer MPs and to hold a referendum on the voting system so that the next general election would be contested under the Alternative Vote system.
Nick Clegg confirmed that the government planned to introduce legislation for five-year fixed-term parliaments, with elections to be held on the first Thursday in May of the fifth year after the previous general election, starting with 7 May 2015.
On 21 July 2010, Nick Clegg became the first Liberal Democrat leader to answer for Prime minister's questions.
The issue of student financing had been considered one of the flagship policies of the Liberal Democrats with all of the party's MPs, including Nick Clegg, signing the Vote for Students pledge to oppose any increase in student tuition fees prior to the 2010 general election.
Nick Clegg wrote to his MPs saying that he had "struggled endlessly" with the issue and said that departing from the pledge he had made prior to the election would be "one of the most difficult decisions of my political career".
On 19 September 2012, Nick Clegg apologised, not for breaking his pledge, but for having "made a promise we weren't absolutely sure we could deliver".
Nick Clegg said that it was "psychologically immensely important" for people to be given a stake in the banks in the wake of the financial crisis.
Nick Clegg revealed the Conservatives rejected his suggestion of a "last ditch" compromise to save both policies.
In September 2012, Nick Clegg formally announced that he was "regrettably" withdrawing proposals to reform the Lords in the face of overwhelming opposition from Conservative MPs.
Nick Clegg supported the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign in the 2016 European Union membership referendum, as did all other Liberal Democrat MPs, and became the Lib Dem spokesperson for Exiting the European Union and International Trade.
In October 2017, Nick Clegg wrote How to Stop Brexit, which made the case that Brexit was not inevitable.
In July 2019, Nick Clegg said that "aggressive and regressive English nationalism" had taken over the Conservative Party in their competition with Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party established in November 2018.
From January 2013 until 2015, Nick Clegg presented a weekly radio show on LBC called Call Nick Clegg.
Nick Clegg joined Facebook because he was "convinced that the culture is changing" and that "lawmakers need to have a serious conversation about whether data-intensive companies allow other companies to share and use data".
Nick Clegg admitted that the Cambridge Analytica data scandal had "rocked Facebook to its very foundations" and told the BBC that the company "hadn't done enough in the past" in regards to data privacy.
Nick Clegg said that the company was working towards greater regulation of technology firms.
In October 2019, Damian Collins, chair of the British House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, formally asked Nick Clegg to explain why Facebook had exempted political statements from fact-checking guidelines.
In 2020, Nick Clegg helped lead the creation of the Facebook Oversight Board, which reported to him, convincing former Danish Prime Minister and former College of Europe friend Helle Thorning-Schmidt to serve as its co-chair.
Nick Clegg then played a role in Facebook's deplatforming of US President Donald Trump in mid-2021.
Nick Clegg faced criticism for his role in defending the company, with the Guardian journalist John Harris dubbing him "the fall guy for Facebook's failures".
In February 2022, Nick Clegg was promoted to president of global affairs.
In January 2025, Nick Clegg announced he would step down from his role as president of global affairs and leave Meta within "the next few months".
Nick Clegg is set to be succeeded by his current deputy Joel Kaplan, a Republican who previously served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff under George W Bush.
Nick Clegg thus became the first Liberal Democrat leader to out-poll Labour in an opinion poll.
Nick Clegg held his Sheffield Hallam seat with a reduced majority.
In September 2000, Nick Clegg married Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, from Valladolid, Spain.
On 16 September 2010, during Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom, Nick Clegg attended the State reception in the grounds of Holyrood Palace and was introduced to the Pope by Her Majesty the Queen.
Nick Clegg has a house in his former constituency close to the Peak District, and often walked with his wife near Stanage Edge, which he describes as "one of the most romantic places in the world".
Nick Clegg was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2018 New Year Honours for political and public service.