When Elon Musk asked his 211 million followers on
But after a spate of strident posts about Britain from Musk, attacking Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer; demand the release of a jailed far-right agitator; and breaking up with a far-right leader, Nigel Farage – turned out to be less a joke than a flexing of a powerful man who revels in his ability to disrupt another country's politics.
Musk's posts, which appeared on x over the holidays like unwelcome guests at a Christmas party, have completely taken over the political debate in Britain in early 2025.
On Monday, Mr. Starmer used a press conference about fixing Britain's National Health Service to deny Musk's allegations that he had failed to act when he was Britain's chief prosecutor more than a decade ago against gangs that sexually abused girls.
Farage, for his part, faced questions about his future as leader of the right-wing anti-immigration party Reform UK after Musk declared on x on Sunday that “<a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1875904634419859928″ title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>Farage doesn't have what it takes.” A day later, Farage published a call for a national investigation into child sexual abuse cases, taking up one of Musk's pet causes.
“Musk has a very distorted understanding of British politics and yet he has a megaphone,” said Robert Ford, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester. “When you say these things at 3am on a Sunday night, you disrupt Labour's entire NHS press conference on Monday.”
The long-term effect of Musk's erratic crusade was harder to predict, Professor Ford said, but some of his measures could backfire. His break with Farage, for example, could work to Farage's advantage.
The likely cause of the split was Farage's refusal to back Musk's demand for the release of far-right agitator Tommy Robinson. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is serving a prison sentence for defying a court order by repeating a slur against a young Syrian refugee. He has multiple criminal convictions and a history of racist and Islamophobic statements.
In Britain, Professor Ford said: “Tommy Robinson is political kryptonite. “There is a reason why Farage wants nothing to do with him, and never has.”
By rejecting Robinson by challenging Musk, he said, Farage could make himself more palatable to right-wing voters who are disenchanted with the Conservatives. Musk, he added, will also find that there are no clear alternatives for the party leader to Farage, an architect of Brexit and a fixture in right-wing British politics for decades who pushed for reform in the United Kingdom during the year's election campaign. past.
For Starmer, who returned from a rare vacation that had to be postponed due to the death of his brother, Musk's intervention was another setback after a failure-ridden start to his fledgling government. With his personal ratings falling in opinion polls, Starmer hoped to start 2025 by implementing a plan to reduce patient waiting times in the NHS.
Instead, reporters asked him about Musk, who had falsely claimed that Starmer had covered up the abuse and exploitation of girls in the 2000s and 2010s by gang members, many of whom were of British-Pakistani descent. “<a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1876147362131071014″ title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>Prison for Starmer“Musk wrote in a post on Monday morning.
“It probably irritated him beyond description to have to deal with this sort of thing,” said Steven Fielding, emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. The prime minister, he said, was trying to avoid “a street fight” with Musk and focus on governing.
Starmer noted that when he was director of the Crown Prosecution Service, between 2008 and 2013, his office brought the first of several cases against a grooming gang and drafted guidelines for mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse. He had addressed the scandal “head-on,” he said.
The prime minister became visibly angry as he defended Jess Phillips, minister for protection and violence against women and girls, from Musk's accusation that she was a “rape genocide apologist” because she rejected calls for a national inquiry into abuse. child sex. exploitation in Oldham, a town near Manchester.
Instead, Ms Phillips had asked for the investigation to be led by Oldham authorities rather than central government. Starmer said he had done “a thousand times more than they had ever dreamed of when it came to protecting victims of sexual abuse”.
Elizabeth Pearson, author of a book about Britain's far-right, “Extreme Britain,” said Robinson, who had been convicted of assault and fraud, was lucky to catch “the attention of one of the most powerful people in the West.” .”
She and other analysts are more puzzled about what Musk stands to gain by supporting a reviled figure who has occupied the sometimes violent margins of British politics. Daily x users in Britain have declined since Musk took over the platform formerly known as twitter; Championing Robinson's cause is unlikely to reverse that trend, experts say.
“It is foreign interference in our system,” said Dr Pearson, a senior lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. “I feel, right now, that Musk is becoming a bad actor seeking to destabilize our system.”
Professor Fielding said Musk was probably catering to his audience in the United States. The risk, he said, was that “anyone who is serious in the American administration will think that this man is setting fires that are absolutely unnecessary.”
Musk's activism has raised alarm in other European countries, such as Germany, where he backed a far-right party with neo-Nazi ties. On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron of France told a diplomatic audience: “Ten years ago, who would have imagined that the owner of one of the world's largest social networks would be supporting a new international reactionary movement?” He did not mention Musk by name.
Likewise, Starmer showed no desire to single out Musk, a close ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, with whom Starmer and his aides have sought to cultivate relationships. “This is not about the United States or Musk,” he told a reporter on Monday. “I'm talking about our politics.”
