When Elon Musk requested his 211 million followers on X to vote on whether or not “America ought to liberate the folks of Britain from their tyrannical authorities,” it appeared as if the submit may solely be tongue-in-cheek.
However coming after a barrage of strident posts about Britain by Mr. Musk — assailing the Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer; demanding the discharge of a jailed far-right agitator; and breaking with a hard-right leader, Nigel Farage — it got here off much less as a joke than a flex by a strong man relishing his potential to roil the politics of one other nation.
Mr. Musk’s posts, which popped up on X all through the vacation like unwelcome visitors at a Christmas celebration, have totally hijacked the political debate in Britain firstly of 2025.
On Monday, Mr. Starmer used a news conference about fixing Britain’s Nationwide Well being Service to disclaim Mr. Musk’s allegations that he had not acted when he was Britain’s chief prosecutor greater than a decade in the past in opposition to gangs that sexually abused ladies.
Mr. Farage, for his half, confronted questions on his future because the chief of the right-wing anti-immigration celebration Reform U.Ok. after Mr. Musk declared on X on Sunday that “Farage doesn’t have what it takes.” A day later, Mr. Farage posted a name for a nationwide inquiry into the instances of kid sexual abuse, selecting up on one in all Mr. Musk’s favourite causes.
“Musk has a really distorted understanding of British politics, and but he’s received a megaphone,” mentioned Robert Ford, a professor of politics on the College of Manchester. “When he says these things at 3 a.m. on a Sunday night time, it disrupts Labour’s complete N.H.S. press convention on Monday.”
The long-term impact of Mr. Musk’s erratic campaign was more durable to foretell, Professor Ford mentioned, however a few of his strikes may backfire. His rupture with Mr. Farage, for instance, may redound to Mr. Farage’s profit.
The probably reason behind the break up was Mr. Farage’s refusal to again Mr. Musk’s demand for the discharge of the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson. Mr. Robinson, whose actual identify is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is serving a jail sentence for defying a courtroom order by repeating a libel in opposition to a younger Syrian refugee. He has a number of felony convictions and a document of racist and Islamophobic statements.
In Britain, Professor Ford mentioned, “Tommy Robinson is political kryptonite. There’s a cause that Farage doesn’t wish to have something to do with him, and by no means has.”
By rejecting Mr. Robinson in defiance of Mr. Musk, he mentioned, Mr. Farage may make himself extra palatable to mainstream voters on the appropriate who’re disenchanted by the Conservatives. Mr. Musk, he added, may also discover that there aren’t clear options for celebration chief to Mr. Farage, an architect of Brexit and a fixture in right-wing British politics for many years who galvanized Reform U.Ok. throughout final 12 months’s election marketing campaign.
For Mr. Starmer, who returned from a uncommon trip that needed to be postponed due to the dying of his brother, Mr. Musk’s intervention was one other setback after a glitch-ridden begin to his fledgling authorities. Together with his private scores plunging in opinion polls, Mr. Starmer hoped to start 2025 by rolling out a plan to scale back affected person ready occasions on the N.H.S.
As a substitute, reporters requested him about Mr. Musk, who had falsely claimed that Mr. Starmer had coated up the abuse and exploitation of ladies within the 2000s and 2010s by gang members, lots of whom had been of British Pakistani heritage. “Prison for Starmer,” Mr. Musk wrote in a single submit on Monday morning.
“It in all probability irritated him past description that he has to cope with this sort of factor,” mentioned Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political historical past on the College of Nottingham. The prime minister, he mentioned, was making an attempt to keep away from “a road combat” with Mr. Musk and concentrate on governing.
Mr. Starmer famous that when he was director of the Crown Prosecution Service, between 2008 and 2013, his workplace introduced the primary of a number of instances in opposition to a grooming gang and drafted pointers for the necessary reporting of kid sexual abuse. He had tackled the scandal “head on,” he mentioned.
The prime minister turned visibly offended as he defended Jess Phillips, a minister for safeguarding and violence in opposition to girls and ladies, from Mr. Musk’s cost that she was a “rape genocide apologist” as a result of she pushed again on requires a nationwide inquiry into youngster sexual exploitation in Oldham, a city close to Manchester.
Ms. Phillips had as an alternative known as for an investigation to be run by Oldham’s authorities moderately than the central authorities. Mr. Starmer mentioned she had carried out “a thousand occasions greater than they’ve even dreamed about on the subject of defending victims of sexual abuse.”
Elizabeth Pearson, the writer of a guide about Britain’s far-right, “Excessive Britain,” mentioned Mr. Robinson, who had been convicted of assault and fraud, was lucky to attract “the eye of some of the highly effective folks within the West.”
She and different analysts are extra puzzled about what Mr. Musk stands to realize from supporting a reviled determine who has occupied the typically violent margins of British politics. Every day customers of X in Britain have declined since Mr. Musk took over the platform previously generally known as Twitter; championing Mr. Robinson’s trigger, specialists mentioned, will not be more likely to reverse that pattern.
“It’s foreign interference in our system,” mentioned Dr. Pearson, a senior lecturer at Royal Holloway, College of London. “I do really feel, in the meanwhile, that Musk is changing into a foul actor searching for to destabilize our system.”
Professor Fielding mentioned Mr. Musk was in all probability catering to his viewers in the US. The danger, he mentioned, was that “anybody who’s severe within the U.S. administration will suppose this man is creating fires which are completely pointless.”
Mr. Musk’s activism has drawn alarm in different European international locations, like Germany, the place he endorsed a far-right party with neo-Nazi ties. On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron of France advised a diplomatic viewers, “Ten years in the past, who would have imagined that the proprietor of one of many world’s largest social networks could be supporting a brand new worldwide reactionary motion.” He didn’t point out Mr. Musk by identify.
Likewise, Mr. Starmer confirmed no urge for food to single out Mr. Musk, an in depth ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, with whom Mr. Starmer and his aides have tried to domesticate relations. “This isn’t about America or Musk,” he mentioned to a reporter on Monday. “I’m speaking about our politics.”
