He’s not a British citizen, he lives four thousand miles away in a different time zone, but somehow Elon Musk has become, at least for the moment, the main character of UK politics in 2025.
When Westminster returned on Monday, it was not the government’s carefully scripted announcement on healthcare provision that led the agenda, but Musk’s continuing feud with the Prime Minister – and a host of other British politicians – over the grooming gangs scandal and the plight of convicted far-right agitator Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon).
As I wrote on Friday, Robinson is a toxic figure even for the right fringes of British politics, which is why Nigel Farage has spent so much effort distancing himself and Reform from him. Such efforts earned Farage a sharp slap-down from the tech billionaire he’d been gleefully posing with for photos and courting for a rumoured $100m donation less than three weeks ago. On Sunday, Musk tweeted, “The Reform Party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes”. Life comes at you fast – a few hours later Musk was tweeting approvingly about Rupert Lowe, one of Reform’s five MPs, as a potential successor to the man who built Reform from scratch and has been one of the most influential people in British politics for the past decade. We’ll see how that goes.
The point is that Musk – the richest man in the world despite the $24bn losses X has made since he bought it to turn it into his personal playground, who is soon to be a key player in Donald Trump’s second presidency – has made the UK his latest obsession. And that has ramifications for everyone.
On the Labour side, it means having to adapt to the idea that the right-hand man of the soon-to-be president of the UK’s most important ally could be seen to have a vendetta against the Prime Minister. Recent Musk tweets include: a poll asking his followers yes or no on his suggestion that “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government”; calling Starmer “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes”, and urging the King to dissolve parliament.
Anyone who has been elected to any political office, of whatever party, should surely bristle at a foreign billionaire trying to bring down a democratically elected government, libelling the Prime Minister, and gleefully hinting at a foreign invasion. Absurd though they are, these are attempts to undermine our democracy.
Yet rather than denounce them outright, the response from the Tory party has been to swerve around Musk’s interventions while using the justifiable outrage at the grooming gangs scandal as a weapon against Labour. It’s an awkward balance to try to strike, partly because it reminds everyone that if not enough has been done to tackle grooming gangs and bring justice to victims, the party that was in power for the past 14 years clearly takes some of the blame, and also because there’s just something very undignified about the way Musk has inserted himself into British politics.
Kemi Badenoch has chosen to go hard on calling for a nationwide inquiry, saying the Tories will add an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing Bill tomorrow. Her calculation seems to be that if she can grab Musk attention and capitalise on the ferocity with which he is attacking Starmer, her party will benefit. But Musk can quickly turn on people who cross his attention span, as Farage would be able to tell her.
One risk for Badenoch is it hands Starmer his own attack line. On Monday he accused the opposition of “jumping on the bandwagon just to get attention… amplifying what the far right is saying”. The Tory leader (in Musk’s good books, for now) was singled out by the PM for not distancing herself from some of the attacks on British MPs and British democracy coming from across the Atlantic.
The other big thing for the Tories to remember is that this stuff hurts them too. However much the Conservatives are enjoying Starmer feeling the heat, many of their MPs and supporters are uncomfortable with the language Musk is using, which could seriously impact MPs’ safety.
Musk has decided the UK electoral system is somehow illegitimate. In November, he promoted a petition calling for another election – surely a big part of the reason it ended up with over three million signatories. As I wrote then, “Elon Musk is now a player in British politics, whether we want to admit it or not.” (The window for my tongue-in-cheek suggestion that Starmer might consider inviting him over for tea at Downing Street now sadly seems to have expired.)
As is the custom when such petitions get over 100,000 signatures, the question of another general election prompted a debate in parliament – which took place on Monday afternoon in Westminster Hall. It wasn’t the liveliest of debates; as it was going on, Yvette Cooper was speaking in the Commons chamber promising a new law to make covering up child sexual abuse a crime in itself, as recommended by the Jay Report. Still, it is worth flagging. No one expects Starmer to call an election just because of a petition or poll, that isn’t how majority government works. Most of the debate was simply Conservative MPs standing up to read pre-written statements slamming the government’s record so far, then Labour MPs standing up to read pre-written statements slamming the Tories.
But Farage was there, wearing union jack socks and carefully taking notes, and he said something different. What the petition showed, he argued, was a sense of disenchantment with the whole political system. He talked about a breach of trust between Westminster and the country and warned that the old two-party system is falling apart.
Farage may have fallen out with his potential mega-donor for now, but the Reform leader is keenly aware of how damaging Musk and the sentiments he is sharing are for both Labour and the Conservatives. It wasn’t the Tories who benefited from the debate in parliament about calling a new election. It won’t be the Tories who benefit from the sudden worldwide fury over the grooming gangs scandal. The more Musk takes aim at Labour, the more the certain it becomes that the Tories will end up as collateral damage.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: New Year, same American violence]
Listen to the New Statesman podcast
Content from our partners
Related
