Prime Minister of Great Britain Keir Starmer strike back Elon Musk on Monday after the world's richest man repeatedly made a series of inflammatory accusations against the country's leader over his government's record in the long-running national child care scandal.
musk accused the UK leader of being “complicit in the rape of Britain” on his X platform and repeatedly raised claims without evidence that Starmer deliberately refused to prosecute childminders when he was the country's solicitor general.
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In the last 48 hours alone, Musk has called for Starmer to be jailed and posted a poll to his X followers asking if “America should free the people of Britain from their tyrannical government.”
Although the British leader did not name Musk directly, he widely condemned what he called the spread of false information.
“Those who spread lies and misinformation as far and wide as possible are not interested in the victims. They're self-interested,” Starmer told reporters at a press conference on Monday.
Musk's comments relate to a years-long scandal in the UK over the state's response to child sex exploitation and courtship gangs, mainly made up of Pakistani men, who prey on vulnerable young girls in towns across northern England.
A 2014 government-commissioned report found that around 1,400 vulnerable children were sexually abused in Rotherham – the biggest single case of child care in the country – between 1997 and 2013. The report details how children as young as 11 have been subjected to human trafficking, rape and other forms of physical abuse.
The report scathingly criticized “collective failures of political and officer leadership” and said that “the mounting evidence that child sexual exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham” had been ignored and even silenced by the authorities.
Starmer served as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013, a role that effectively made him the country's top prosecutor when child care scandals came to light.
On Monday, Starmer vigorously defended his prosecution.
“In this particular case, I initiated the first major prosecution of an Asian vigilante group… it was the first of its kind. We changed, or I changed, the whole approach of the prosecution, because I wanted to challenge and challenged the myths and stereotypes that hindered the hearing of these victims,” said the Prime Minister.
“When I left office we had the highest number of child sexual abuse cases ever,” Starmer added.
A 2013 report by the British Parliament praised Starmer's actions in combating child sexual exploitation and grooming groups.
“Mr Starmer has been committed to improving the treatment of victims of sexual abuse in the criminal justice system throughout his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions. His response should be a model for other agencies tackling localized grooming,” the report said. .
Starmer, who took office after Labour's stunning election victory last summer, has so far resisted pressure from critics to launch a new national review into such historic child sex abuse, saying many reviews have already been carried out at national and local level. by case.
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Responding tothese comments this morning, Musk tweeted on X that the “real reason” Starmer isn't doing a national background check is that it would “show how Starmer has repeatedly ignored the pleas of so many little girls and their parents in order to get political support.”
Musk, a key adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, has been embroiled in a feud with Starmer's centre-left Labor government since then. far-right rioters caused havoc in the United Kingdom last summer.
At the time, Musk called Britain a “police state” after the Starmer government aggressively prosecuted those involved in the riots.
Over the past week, Musk has also advocated for the release of far-right activist Tommy Robinson, a central figure in last summer's violence.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is a long-time far-right campaigner who led the English Defense League, a group that UK police have linked to the initial violent protest that sparked nationwide riots in August.
Robinson is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court.
The very public dispute with the British government is just the latest in a series of interventions by Musk in the domestic politics of key US allies in Europe.
In an article for the German publication Welt am Sonntag published last month, Musk publicly supported the far rightanti-immigrant AfD party in the upcoming elections in the country in February.
“Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country,” Musk wrote in his translated comments.
European leaders have been outspoken in their criticism of the tech billionaire's meddling and have publicly voiced concerns about Musk's influence, given his ownership of the X platform.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that Musk was directly interfering in Germany's affairs.
“Ten years ago, who could have imagined if we were told that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would support a new international reactionary movement and directly interfere in elections, including in Germany,” Macron said in a wide-ranging foreign policy speech.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gare Stoer also said Monday that Musk's influence was a cause for concern.
“I find it disturbing that a person with enormous access to social networks and enormous economic resources is interfering so directly in the internal affairs of other countries,” Stoer told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, according to Reuters.
“This is not the way it should be in relations between democracies and allies,” Storr said.
contributed to this report.
