Steerpike

It's all change at Meta HQ. As Mr S reported last week, former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg – who has served as one of Mark Zuckerberg's senior execs at the company since 2018 – is now on his way out. Taking, ironically, to rival platform Twitter, Clegg wrote that it was now 'the right time' to move on from his role at the social media giant, adding his experience 'truly has been an adventure of a lifetime'. How sweet. Clegg's replacement will be his current deputy, Joel Kaplan – who was also George W. Bush's White House deputy chief of staff. But that's not the only reshuffle Meta has made. Now it transpires that the chief exec of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), Dana White, has joined the social media titan's board of directors.

It’s not been a great start to the year for Sir Keir Starmer’s army. As if poor poll ratings and sporadic online attacks by Elon Musk weren’t causing enough problems, now the Labour party has landed itself in more trouble. The UK Labour party’s TikTok account was found to have released a rather bizarre video featuring a song that contains some quite, er, controversial song lyrics.  The baffling clip sparked outrage after social media users clocked the song used as the backing track. The choice – entitled ‘Montagem Coral’ by DJ Holanda, MC TH and MC GW – consisted of graphic lyrics that, when translated to English, are shown to discuss giving young women drugs before sleeping with them.

Well, that didn't last long. Just 19 days after Nigel Farage and Elon Musk were snapped beaming together at Mar-a-Lago, the bromance is already over. Sad! It seems that the Tesla billionaire didn't take too kindly to Farage's (mild) rebuke of his call to release Tommy Robinson from prison. Just hours after Farage praised Musk on the BBC, the latter took to – where else? – X to declare the end of their short-lived friendship. 'The Reform Party needs a new leader', Musk declared. 'Farage doesn’t have what it takes'. So much for loyalty eh?At present, it looks like Musk is out on his own on this one. None of the four other Reform MPs in parliament have echoed the call for Farage to quit, with supportive voices in the media quick to back his decision to distance the party from Robinson.

It's been quite the 24 hours in British politics. Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has spent much of it lambasting Labour on Twitter/X over its decision not to hold a government inquiry into child abuse in Oldham. But has he now gone too far? The Tesla founder has posted numerous claims calling for the release of far-right protester Tommy Robinson, jailed last year for contempt of court. It begged the obvious question: would Reform UK – Musk's preferred party of choice in Britain – take up Robinson's cause too? When Mr S put the question to Reform spinners, the answer that came back was unequivocal: no, given his onetime membership of the English Defence League. But it was left to leader Nigel Farage to field questions about Musk's backing of Robinson last night.

There have been better weeks for community relations in Britain. So what better time for Mr S to report the news that ministers are still planning to press on with a definition of Islamophobia? Back in opposition, Labour supported the adoption of a definition of Islamophobia, drawn up by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, while Wes Streeting – now the Health Secretary – was its chairman. It states: ‘Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.’ The Telegraph noted back in August that such a term would not be legally binding but organisations would be urged to adopt in a similar way to the anti-Semitism definition was accepted under Theresa May in 2016.

Happy new year Nick Clegg. The onetime Deputy Prime Minister has spent much of the past decade collecting oodles of cash from the social media giant formerly known as Facebook. Clegg has served as one of Mark Zuckerberg’s senior executives at Meta since October 2018, living out of a £7 million mansion in Silicon Valley. Talk about a good European eh? But all good things must come to an end. And today, just months after trumpeting the UK’s Brexit freedoms on AI policy, he has now announced his departure from Meta. Writing, ironically, on rival platform X, Sir Nick wrote a four tweet statement that had all the spontaneity and joy of a hostage video.