Anti-Brexit former Liberal Democrats leader and former deputy prime minister turned California big tech executive Sir Nick Clegg has admitted there is “absolutely no evidence” the Russian government influenced the EU referendum via Facebook.

Sir Nick’s book How to Stop Brexit was voted non-fiction book of the year in a secret ballot of parliamentarians in 2017 — for many Brexiteers a worrying sign of their intentions — and he was active in the so-called “Remain Resistance” from almost the moment the people’s vote to Leave the European Union was announced, holding high-profile meetings with EU leaders during the British government’s negotiations with Brussels alongside the likes of Tony Blair and Sir John Major.

However, he officially retired from the “resistance” after being offered a lucrative job in California as global communications chief for Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook — a move followed by the expulsion of dissident Brexiteers such as Paul Joseph Watson from the social media network not long after — and has now dealt a blow to one of the key narratives of Remainers seeking to delegitimise the 2016 result, by admitting that there is “absolutely no evidence” the Russian government influenced the outcome through the platform.

Who Is Nick Clegg? Left-wing, Anti-Brexit Former UK Deputy PM Hired as Facebook’s Global Comms Chief https://t.co/5hmzM3yJR9 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) October 20, 2018

“We ran two full analyses of all the data we have in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, following exactly the same methodology as we did after the FBI notified Facebook of outside interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” said the former MP in an interview with the BBC.

“We’ve shared all this information with the select committee and Westminster and elsewhere. We have found no evidence of a significant attempt by outside forces,” he revealed — an admission which will badly damage the long-running suggestions of interference by anti-Brexit conspiracy theorists such as Damian Collins MP and Carole Cadwalladr of the Guardian/Observer.

Damian Collins: Britain’s Russian Inquiry Chief is a Hardline Remainer, Quoted Soros, Spread Govt Fake News Over Brexit https://t.co/Xuf0NeaAkY — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 11, 2018

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery