Nick Clegg

PR teams have been left scrambling to fill seats for a talk by former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg with cut price tickets.

Audiences were invited to spend an evening listening to the man who took the Liberal Democrats into a coalition with the Tories before moving to the United States to work for Facebook.

But this week tickets for the event at the Union Chapel were being sold off at a huge 69 per cent discount.

Even at the slashed price of £10 a go, however, critics were suggesting Lord Clegg was still asking too much.

The billing promotes him as a figure “who has had a seat at the heart of power for nearly two decades” and promises insight into the “battle for big tech”.

Long-serving Labour councillor Paul Convery labelled the cut price tickets “a preposterous price” to listen to “a yesterday man without enough backstory to be actually interesting”.

The special offer for tickets to the Union Chapel talk

He added: “Before scarpering off to flak for US Big Tech, Clegg enabled 14 years of disastrous Tory government. In 2010 the Liberal Democrats entered a ‘coalition’ which was a smokescreen for George Osborne’s vicious programme of austerity. Clegg and his crew knew exactly what would happen to public services in this country and almost certainly wanted it to happen.”

Union Chapel has been successful at packing out earlier this year for a series of other political talks from commentators including Ash Sarkar and Gary Stevenson.

Mr Clegg was hired by Mark Zuckerberg as the President of Global Affairs at Meta ­­– the company which runs Facebook ­– after the humiliation of losing his parliamentary seat in 2017. He is expected to argue at the talk there has been too great a backlash against ‘Big Tech’. He will say that accusations that social media algorithms polarise, manipulate and harm adults and children are “overblown”.

Union Chapel

David Poyser, chair of the Islington North Constituency Labour Party, told the Tribune that it would “take a lot more than a damp squib of a meeting in the Union Chapel with a former Facebook apologist to have a Lib Dem revival in Islington”, adding: “Though the Lib Dems did very well nationally in the last General Election, Lib Dem activists have turned out in the by-elections in Islington since then and got nowhere.”

But Kate Pothalingham, the chair of Islington Liberal Democrats, said that Lord Clegg’s popularity was not a yardstick for the party now.

She said: “His name has never been mentioned to me on the doorstep. I’ve never found myself in that situation. Judging by the canvassing we’re doing, I have no doubt that people still think the Lib Dems are relevant and needed.

“For me, the issues we’re talking about are today’s issues. Lack of affordable housing, poor cleaning and maintenance of roads and streets and pavements.”

Ms Pothalingham added: “Things that do come up are to do with the Labour government. People are concerned about cuts to PIP, Winter Fuel Allowance, and the general approach taken.

“We talk to new and old voters on the doorstep. The cycle of 14 years of coalition or Conservative governments and the hope that was raised by the new Labour government is the current focus of their attentions.”