Former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has slammed the billions of pounds’ worth of American tech investment into the UK announced during the US president Donald Trump’s historic second state visit.
The Guardian has reported that, during a Cambridge-based Royal Television Society event, Clegg described a recent spate of US-UK tech trade deals as Silicon Valley providing Britain with its “sloppy seconds” and as “mutton dressed as lamb”. These deals include £11bn from Nvidia and $30bn from Microsoft into Britain’s AI sector.
Clegg, who also previously served as president of global affairs at American social media giant Meta, warned that the UK will be beholden to the US as a result of the investment.
He also suggested that, instead of focusing on homegrown technology companies, turning to Silicon Valley firms means Britain will be “defanged”.
Elsewhere in his speech, Clegg alluded to the deals serving only America and its tech elite by describing them as “one-sided”.
He also revealed that Britain’s ex-US ambassador, Peter Mandelson, who was recently sacked over alleged ties to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, approached Clegg for his thoughts on American tech firms ploughing their money into Britain – to which the former Lib Dem bigwig urged caution.
However, Clegg admitted that a lack of UK-based “growth capital” available to domestic tech firms often results in them jumping on a plane to Silicon Valley in order to secure the funding needed to serve their “scale or ambition”.
He also said: “In a sense, this US-UK tech deal is just another version of the United Kingdom holding on to Uncle Sam’s coat-tails.”
