Why is Elon Musk attacking the British government?

Elon Musk has made the British government his new favorite target for harassment. He continues tweets and interviews to call for the British people to be “liberated” from Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whom he accuses of leading a “tyrannical police state”.

A headache for the government, which sees this billionaire hidden on the other side of the Atlantic using the growing fear of immigration to rekindle already strong tensions in the country.

Latest case unearthed by the billionaire, a scandal of sexual assault, rape and exploitation of minors more than 20 years old which at the time had the effect of a bomb.

A pedophilia scandal swept under the rug

Between 1997 and 2013, more than 1,400 minors were victims of sexual abuse, exploitation and rape in the town of Rotherham in the north-east of England. Children who were mostly under the protection of child protection social services, accused of having turned a blind eye to the situation and of having ignored several alarming reports. An affair then widely reported by the British and foreign media.

Laëtitia Langlois, lecturer in British civilization at the University of Angers, affirms that this episode shocked the United Kingdom: “When the British understood that these rapes had been taking place since the 1980s, there was a “a mixture of emotion, but above all anger, when the failures of child protection services and the police were revealed.”

According to the specialist, it was the nationality of the attackers, the vast majority of whom were Pakistani, which was at the heart of the scandal. “There was great fear in these cities of stirring up hatred against populations who are already discriminated against.” Hundreds of attacks, taken lightly or ignored, to avoid rekindling the racial tensions which were spreading in the country. A justification that Elon Musk took up, accusing British justice of judging citizens differently depending on their nationality, and according to him of judging white British men even more harshly.

Keir Starmer in the viewfinder

By bringing this matter back to the forefront, the billionaire also finds a way to directly attack Keir Starmer, Labor Prime Minister and regular target of Musk.

Between 2008 and 2013, at the heart of the affair, Keir Starmer headed the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), a body responsible for assisting police services during investigations to define charges and potential penalties. He is therefore accused by the owner of Tesla of having been negligent, and partly responsible for the suffering of these young girls. An easy criticism for Laëtitia Langlois: “Few people really know what this role consists of, it’s simply a way of tackling it. He knows that all he has to do is spread rumors like this to set things ablaze.”

The Prime Minister's response was not long in coming. In a press conference this Monday morning, Keir Starmer attacks his detractor head-on: “Those who spread lies and disinformation […] are not interested in the victims. They are interested in themselves.” Behind the media coverage of the affair, Elon Musk mainly seeks to disseminate his far-right, anti-immigration and close to white supremacy ideas.

Musk is not his first attempt

In recent weeks, Elon Musk has taken a close interest in British political life and criticized the government's slightest actions. He notably called for the release of far-right activist Tommy Robinson, head of the anti-migrant attacks last summer in the same town of Rotherham. Now incarcerated for repeating defamatory remarks against a Syrian refugee, the owner of X sees in him a “defender of freedom of expression”, unjustly locked up.

Musk also flirted for a few weeks with the far-right Reform UK party and its leader Nigel Farage. The billionaire first promised to financially support the party, after a meeting with its leader in Donald Trump's house, before retracting a few days ago, saying that Nigel Farage was not the right leader. for the Reform UK party.

A ping-pong that does not surprise Laëtitia Langlois: “The two men disagree on the incarceration of Tommy Robinson. Musk sees in him the defender of freedom of expression in the United Kingdom, where Farage surely sees in him a potential political adversary, capable of overtaking him from the right. As is often the case, a single disagreement is enough to become an enemy of Elon Musk.

What is Elon Musk looking for in England?

For our specialist, Musk, like Steve Bannon at the time, seeks to unite European far-right parties around his values, anti-immigration, “war against wokism” and others.

“Like his predecessor, he identified the United Kingdom as a country where his ideas are popular, taking advantage of a favorable context where the whole of Europe is attracted by this current of thought. »

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The objective: to make the country an entry point before being able to influence other European parties.