When Elon Musk asked his 211 million followers on X to vote on whether “America should free the people of Britain from their tyrannical government,” it seemed the post could only be objectionable.
But after a barrage of scathing posts about Britain from Mr. Musk — attacks Labor prime minister Keir Starmer. demanding the release of a jailed far-right rioter; and breaking with a hardline leader, Nigel Farage — was less funny than a joke from a powerful man relishing his ability to upset another country’s politics.
The posts of Mr. Appearing in X over the holidays as unwelcome guests at a Christmas party, Musk has completely taken over the political conversation in early 2025 Britain.
On Monday, Mr. Starmer used a press conference on fixing Britain’s National Health Service to deny Mr. Musk said he had failed to act when he was Britain’s attorney-general more than a decade ago against gangs that sexually abused girls.
Mr. Farage, for his part, faced questions about his future as leader of the right-wing anti-immigration Reform UK party after Mr. Musk told X on Sunday that “Farage doesn’t have what it takes.” A day later, Mr. Farage has issued a call for a national inquiry into child sexual abuse, uncovering one of his favorite causes. Musk.
“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 he says these things at 3am on a Sunday night, he interrupts the Labor press conference on Monday.”
The long-term effect of the erratic crusade of Mr. Musk was harder to predict, Professor Ford said, but some of his moves could backfire. His break with Mr Farage, for example, could be to Mr. Farage.
The possible cause of the split was the refusal of Mr. Farage to support Mr. Musk to release far-right rioter Tommy Robinson. Mr. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is serving a prison sentence for defying a court order by repeating a libel 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’s a reason Farage wants nothing to do with him and never has.”
Rejecting Mr. Robinson in defiance of Mr. Musk said, Mr. Farage could become more palatable to mainstream right-wing voters disenchanted with the Conservatives. Mr. Musk, he added, will also find that there are no clear alternatives to the party leader in Mr. Farage, the architect of Brexit and a stalwart of right-wing British politics for decades who pushed Reform UK during last year’s election campaign.
For Mr. Starmer, who returned from a rare holiday that had to be postponed due to the death of his brother, the intervention of Mr. Musk was another setback after a dysfunctional start to his fledgling administration. With his personal ratings falling in the polls, Mr. Starmer hoped to start by 2025 developing a plan to reduce patient waiting times on the NHS
Instead, reporters asked him about Mr. Musk, who had falsely claimed that Mr. Starmer had covered the abuse and exploitation of girls in the 2000s and 2010s by gang members, many of whom were of British Pakistani heritage. “Jail for Starmer,” wrote Mr. Mask in a post on Monday morning.
“It probably irritated him beyond description to have to deal with this sort of thing,” said Stephen Fielding, emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. The prime minister, he said, was trying to avoid “a road race” with Mr. Mask and focus on governance.
Mr. Starmer noted that when he was director of the Crown Prosecution Service between 2008 and 2013, his office brought the first of many grooming gang cases and drew up guidelines for mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse. He had faced the scandal “head on”, he said.
The prime minister was visibly angry as he defended Jess Phillips, minister for protection and violence against women and girls, against Musk’s accusation that he was a “rape genocide apologist” for pushing back against calls for a national inquiry into children’s sex lives. farm in Oldham, a town near Manchester.
Ms. Phillips had instead called for an investigation to be carried out by the Oldham authorities rather than central government. Mr. Starmer said she had done “a thousand times more than they had even dreamed of when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse”.
Elizabeth Pearson, author of a book on the British far-right, Extreme Britain, said Mr. Robinson, who had been convicted of assault and fraud, was fortunate enough to attract “the attention of one of the most powerful men in the West. .”
She and other analysts are more confused about what Mr. Masked by the support of an offensive figure who has occupied the sometimes violent fringes of British politics. Daily X users in Britain have fallen since Mr. Musk took over the platform formerly known as Twitter. The defense of the case of Mr. Robinson, experts said, is unlikely to reverse that trend.
“It’s a foreign intervention in our system,” said Dr. Pearson, 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 that Mr. Musk was probably catering to his audience in the United States. The danger, he said, was that “anyone who is serious in the American government will think that this man is creating fires that are completely unnecessary.”
The activism of Mr. Musk has caused alarm in other European countries, such as Germany, where he has 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 largest social networks in the world would support a new international reactionary movement.” He did not mention Mr. Musk by name.
Similarly, Mr. Starmer showed no desire to single out Mr. Musk, a close ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, with whom Mr. Starmer and his aides tried to cultivate relationships. “This is not about America or Musk,” he told a reporter on Monday. “I’m talking about our policy.”
