Elon Musk Moves To Disrupt British Politics
Pioneers possible reset of business-government power balance
[The Editors is called The Editors, plural, not The Editor, singular, for a reason. When I launched it, a shrewd friend advised, “it can’t just be you.” I’m delighted to start including some additional voices. Today’s comes from Michael Mosbacher, who is associate comment editor at London’s Daily Telegraph. He is a past editor of Standpoint and The Critic, having co-founded both British magazines.—Ira Stoll.]
Elon Musk seems to have a penchant for creative destruction — and right now he is doing his best to upend the British political scene. His vigorous and combative approach is certainly rather different from the subservient way big business has so often interacted with government over recent decades.
The tech billionaire has allowed speculation to spread that Musk, following his support for Trump in the 2024 U.S. election, is about to make a significant donation to Nigel Farage’s upstart Reform UK party, perhaps up to $100 million. In the British context, this is a totally unheard of sum; Britain’s largest ever single political donation has been £10 million ($12.4 million), and there have been precious few of those.
Stoking the speculation, Musk granted an audience to Nigel Farage last month and allowed photos to be released to the media.
Any donation would be slightly legally awkward, as those not on the UK’s electoral roll cannot make donations to political parties. But there is a way around that, as UK companies are able to do so, and Musk’s social media platform X has a UK subsidiary. And the donation is now looking rather less likely after Musk’s Sunday morning post that “The Reform Party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes.”
Now Musk is laying into the British political class as a whole, and Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer in particular, over free speech, Islam, and rape gangs.
Elon’s X posts are coming through thick and fast. He has been calling for a national public inquiry into the rape gangs (Labour has said no), an early election (it almost certainly won’t happen — we had an election in July which Labour won with a huge majority, albeit on a modest share of the vote), a government minister to be imprisoned (also highly unlikely), and anti-Islam street agitator Tommy Robinson to be released from prison. Robinson was ordered jailed for 18 months beginning in October 2024 for breaching a court order banning him from distributing a video making allegations that the courts had found to be untrue against a then-15-year old Syrian refugee.
The background to the story is that since the late 1980s so-called grooming gangs have been operating in some of England’s declining northern towns. Predominantly British-Pakistani men, many of them taxi drivers, have been preying on poor predominantly white girls. Many of the girls were under the “care” of local government authorities. In Rotherham — a Yorkshire town with a population of under 130,000 — between 1997 and 2013 1,400 girls were reportedly abused by such gangs.
For years the police did little. Social workers feared taking action, in case they were accused of racism. The police excused their lack of action on the grounds of avoiding stoking up community tensions. Prosecutors did likewise. In many of the areas where this was taking place, local councils turned a blind eye — in some instances, local politicians of Pakistani heritage were related to perpetrators or worse.
The scandal was also underreported — most of the media shied away from it for fear of being accused of racism.
Those journalists that did investigate in the early 2010s — Andrew Norfolk, a reporter on The Times of London, and campaigning feminist Julie Bindel — faced opprobrium for doing so. But gradually the story gained traction.
What adds to the political salience of the scandal is that Starmer, before embarking on his political career, was Director of Public Prosecutions — England's chief prosecutor — from 2008 to 2013. The first prosecutions of child grooming gangs did occur under his watch. But many campaigners and survivors believe he did much too little, much too late.
Musk’s interventions are difficult for both Labour and for the Tories. They even pose some issues for Reform.
For Labour the challenges are clear. While in opposition, the party called for public inquiries endlessly, into any possible scandal. Such inquiries are not an unalloyed blessing. They usually drag on for years if not decades and mean politicians don’t need to find answers for an issue straight away. Such investigations seem to profit only the lawyers raking in millions in fees.
Now Starmer is not so keen. Such an inquiry into grooming gangs will inevitably question his decisions as public prosecutor. It will also shed a light on the incompetence of the Labour controlled councils in these northern towns and may directly implicate some local politicians.
The minister for safeguarding, Jess Phillips, who formally rejected the calls for a public inquiry, is the one that Musk thinks should be in prison. In last July’s election she came within 700 votes of losing her normally ultra safe, Labour seat in a heavily Muslim Birmingham district to an Islamist candidate — in this case a white convert.
And here is Labour’s real problem. The party lost four seats to Islamist independents in July and current polling suggests they would lose at least three more now. There is the potential of them losing up to another twenty or so. Labour fears that a public inquiry shedding light on what has been going on among parts of the British-Pakistani community would ensure that more Muslim voters abandon them and imperil their position in a future close election.
But Labour has certainly been much more cautious in its response to Musk than it would be if the remarks had been made by virtually anyone else. It is still hoping that Tesla might invest in manufacturing capacity in the UK. The rollout of affordable electric cars is essential for the government to meet its net zero carbon emission goals.
For the Tories, the problem is that they have been in power for the last 14 years, until last summer. And this scandal does not date back six months, it goes back 35 years. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is now calling for a public inquiry. But the Conservatives could have arranged for one at any point they were in office, and Kemi was a minister in the last government. Why did they not do more when they were in a position to do so?
For Reform and Farage the issue is rather different. Having the world’s richest man as his new best friend is obviously all for the good, but that man coming to the defence of Tommy Robinson is not so helpful.
Farage wants to put the biggest distance possible between himself and the kind of confrontational street agitation Robinson represents. The Reform leader rightly thinks that many more voters will be put off by street yobbery than attracted by it. The small minority that are attracted by it in any case have nowhere else to turn.
Farage left his previous political vehicle, the United Kingdom Independence Party, after standing down as leader when the new leader allowed Robinson in and appointed him as an advisor on Islam. There will be no rapprochement any time soon for very good political reasons, whatever Musk may think. But these are minor, local difficulties compared to those of Labour and the Tories.
Of Starmer, Badenoch, and Farage, it is only the Reform leader who is the winner from Musk’s interventions. And it looks increasingly likely that we have only seen the start of his plans to disrupt British politics.
If other business leaders follow in Musk’s path, the disruption could go far beyond Britain, signaling the potential for a more robust approach by big business towards government. The modern state has seen it as its role to hold business to account, but this can be a two way street. Business leaders may just be waking up to the fact that they can play a useful role in holding governments to account. Musk may well be a pioneer.
Yes, there is a difference in UK law to giving money to campaigns such as Best for Britain, which are not political parties, and actual political parties, like Reform.
If Soros's donation had been made directly to one side or the other during the 2016 referendum campaign, rules would have been very similar to those that apply to political parties.
But the Best for Britain campaign was post the referendum - basically an attempt to overturn the referendum - so those rules would not have applied.
There would be nothing to stop Musk putting as much money as he likes into a UK campaign, so long as it is not involved in an election campaign. But the tight restrictions would also apply to a third party campaign taking out ads in support of candidate/party during an election/referendum even if it was theoretically independent of the party itself.
As my piece mentions, Musk does have a way around the rules by making donations via a UK company. But it has to be a real operating company, ie not just a company bought off the shelf with the sole purpose of making the donation (although, in practice, and at levels of a million or so, there have been cases which look suspiciously like this in the past).
And you may not be surprised to hear, since Elon's donation has been aired, there is talk from Labour of tightening the law on donations from UK companies (what is being suggested is that they should in future only make donations up to an amount they could reasonably pay out of their UK profits). But such a change in law would take a while to push through. Would say at least six months, probably longer