He demanded the release of the convicted criminal and far-right agitator. He falsely accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of not going after child abusers when he led public prosecutions. He approved a post calling on King Charles III to dissolve parliament and call an election to topple Britain's seven-month-old Labor government, which is constitutionally impossible.
Elon Musk has once again set his sights on Britain, plunging the country into the whimsical world of his online obsessions. In a series of posts that began before the New Year, Mr. Musk went over his enthusiasm. The strengthening of the far-right party in Germany Targeting Britain on many politically sensitive fronts.
Ignoring months of Mr Musk's trolling, the British government on Friday backtracked, albeit in characteristically polite fashion.
“Elon Musk is an American citizen and perhaps he should focus on issues across the Atlantic,” the government's health minister, Andrew Gwynn, told LBC radio in an interview. Mr. Gwynne's boss, Health Secretary Wes Streeting, told reporters that “some of the criticism that Elon Musk has made is, I think, misjudged and certainly misinformed.”
Britain is one of several European countries where Mr. Musk is trying to replicate the influence he wielded on behalf of President-elect Donald J. Trump in the American election last fall. In addition to Germany, he defended a a a far-right party with neo-Nazi tiesAlternative for Germany has shaken up the country's politics ahead of next month's elections, Mr Musk said close ties To Italy's right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
In Britain, Mr. Musk's antagonism to the Labor government stems in part from his aggressive response to online hate speech. Officials said false and inflammatory posts helped fuel the anti-immigrant riots that followed the killing of three girls in a mass stabbing in Southport last July. They arrested more than 30 people, prompting Mr Musk to condemn the government for what he called an attack on free speech, which he praised on his X platform.
Britain, he said, was “becoming a police state”.
Since then, however, Mr Musk has dealt with other volatile issues, from declaring his support for UK Reform, an anti-immigrant party, to fueling outrage over the government's decade-old response to the child. sexual abuse scandal in the northern town of Rotherham. Around 1,400 girls were exploited by 'peer gangs', mainly British Pakistani men.
Perhaps most provocatively, Mr. Musk has taken on the cause of his real name, far-right anti-immigrant agitator Tommy Robinson. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. He has been in prison since October has been convicted defying a court order by repeating false allegations about a teenage Syrian refugee who successfully sued him for defamation.
Mr Robinson has previously been arrested for assault, mortgage fraud and traveling to the US on a false passport. was trying to make connections with right-wing groups.
“Free Tommy Robinson!” Mr. Musk posted it as a pinned item on Jan. 2 on his X account, which has 210 million followers.
Mr Musk's defense of Mr Robinson has put his other right-wing allies in Britain in a difficult position. Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK and a close ally of Mr Trump, has long shied away from Mr Robinson, who founded the English Defense League, an Islamophobic, nationalist group known for violent street protests in the late 2000s and 2010s.
Mr Farage, delighted by Mr Musk's endorsement and meeting with him in the hope of winning donations for Reform England, reiterated his demands for a new investigation into the child sex abuse scandal. But he is remarkably silent about Mr. Robinson.
Mr. Musk's promotion of the far-right AfD party, as in Germany a widespread backlash Mr Musk's interventions against him have won him few fans in Britain. But analysts say her closeness to and influence over Mr Trump means her views, fueled by her social media platform, have not gone unnoticed by the government.
“His message is not working in Britain and Germany, but the governments are limited by their relationship with Trump,” said Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a London-based think tank. “It will be quite difficult to have a relationship with Trump. What Musk has done is to put this non-government official in the center of the court.”
Mr. Katwala argued that it makes sense for the government to respond to Mr. Musk's more extreme or erroneous statements if his unpopularity makes him an attractive target for other critics. “They set a clear goal without saying anything,” he said.
Privately, British officials hope that after Mr. Trump's inauguration later this month, Mr. Musk will be too busy overhauling the American federal government to continue his daily barrage of criticism against Britain and Germany. But in the meantime, its reach online is wide enough that “it affects the political climate,” said Mr. Katwala, citing the child sex abuse scandal as an example.
Mr. Musk's writings have helped fuel a storm over a case that has been the subject of local and national investigations since 2014. Jess Phillips, one of Mr Starmer's ministers, said this after pushing back against calls for another national inquiry. it was the local council's job — the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, followed Mr Farage. criticizes the government. “No one in authority has joined the dots,” he said on X on Jan. 2.
On Friday, Mr. Musk claimed that Ms. Phillips, the deputy secretary for protection and violence against women and girls they have campaigned for a long time was a “rape-genocide apologist” for women's rights — language that women's rights advocates said threatened Ms. Phillips' safety. He also sought to turn the scandal against Mr Starmer, who headed the Crown Prosecution Service from 2008 to 2013.
Although several men were arrested, the investigation found that police and prosecutors were slow to respond to the charges, partly due to victims' reluctance to come forward and partly due to concerns about racism, given that most of the accused were British Pakistanis. .
“Starmer was complicit in the FORCING of BRITAIN when he was Head of Crown Prosecution Service for 6 years,” Mr Musk said in a post at the top of his account on Friday. “Starmer must go and he must face charges for his part in the worst mass crime in British history.”
In fact, after the scandal in 2013, Mr Starmer published new guidelines on how the Crown Prosecution Service would deal with child sexual abuse cases.
By winning a sliding Parliamentary majority Mr Starmer is in no danger of losing his job in July. But the drumbeat of misinformation and criticism of Mr Musk, along with the prospect of him funding Britain's Reformation, has unnerved people across the political spectrum in Britain. Lawmakers have called on the government to tighten laws to limit foreigners donating to British political parties.
Mr Musk's endorsement of posts calling for Charles to step in and call an election betrayed his ignorance of how Britain works. Under the terms of his constitutional monarchy, the king can dissolve Parliament but only at the request of the prime minister, who decides when elections will be called.
“He's the Citizen Kane of the 21st century,” Mr. Katwala said of Mr. Musk. “He has a picture of Britain, Germany, and he's looking for information to confirm those pictures. The problem with its export to England or Germany is the obvious ignorance of England or Germany.”