“An insult to Britain.” How Elon Musk made an old scandal the main topic in the country

Billionaire Elon Musk launched an attack on the British government on the X social network, which he owns. He labeled the subject of his tweets as Rape of Britain – “Abuse of Britain”.

They are about a high-profile story with ethnic gangs of pimps who were engaged in the corruption of teenage children – usually from socially disadvantaged families – and the sexual exploitation of their victims.

Initially, Musk criticized the current British government for allegedly hiding the scale of violence against children and the ethnic origin of rapists. And then he simply moved on to direct insults, including at Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and announced the X vote: should America save Britain from a “tyrannical government.”

Not all of Musk's statements were true, but they caused a national scandal.

The situation has once again shown another important thing: Elon Musk, the closest advisor to US President-elect Donald Trump, openly sympathizes with the far right. So much so that even the most right-wing of the current British politicians does not like him, and he demanded that the one who is in prison be released.

What Elon Musk said

In just two days of his campaign against the British authorities, January 5-6, Elon Musk published 54 tweets and retweets criticizing the way cases of child abuse are investigated in the UK (for comparison: only two about his company Space X).

The fact is that on January 1 it became known: the Labour government in power refused to carry out a national investigation into cases of child abuse in cities in the north of England.

The authorities of Oldham, one of these cities, requested such an investigation. But UK Home Secretary Jess Phillips rejected this, saying that an investigation by local police would be more effective.

Elon Musk went on the attack. He simply suggested that Phillips be put in prison, then said that hundreds of thousands and even millions of cases of violence were covered up by the government, in particular by the current Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who headed the Royal Prosecution Service from 2008 to 2013.

But most importantly, Musk wrote in one tweet after another, – Labor hid the fact that all these crimes were committed by people from Asia, mainly from Pakistan.

From the individual, Musk moved on to the general, wanting prison for the “absolutely disgusting” Starmer, who “repeatedly ignored the pleas of a huge number of little girls and their parents – to secure political support for himself”. He said that the British law enforcement system does not serve the people.

Well, and then he attached a tweet-vote to his account: should America save Britain from a “tyrannical government”.

How fair are Mask's words

The problem of systematic violence against children, especially those living in dysfunctional families or shelters in the UK, really exists. But to say that it is being silenced is an exaggeration.

The most high-profile such scandal became known in 2014, when it gradually became known that at least 1,400 cases of crimes against children had occurred in the town of Rotherham from the late 1980s to the 2010s, and most of them indeed involved an ethnic gang – mainly of Pakistani origin.

Girls and boys, both white and Asian, were raped and forced into prostitution.

The exact number of victims is almost impossible to establish, as not all cases became known to the police or social services, but it is certainly not the hundreds of thousands that Elon Musk wrote about.

The report, which the previous Conservative government commissioned Professor Alexis Jay to compile, revealed that local authorities and the police frankly underestimated the scale of what was happening. And the ethnic origin of the criminals was initially kept quiet, as it turned out later, because they were afraid of accusations of racism.

All this ended in resignations, high-profile criminal cases and sentences of 10 to 35 years.

Elon Musk is sure: Starmer, who headed the Crown Prosecution Service, knew and kept quiet about the scale of what was happening.

In response, the Health Minister in the current Labour government, Karin Smith, recalled that Starmer worked as the head of the public prosecution department in those years, and he was “applauded” for his efforts in the fight against gangs.

The BBC Verify fact-checking department confirmed that criminal cases against those who induce children to sexual exploitation increased during Starmer's work in the Crown Prosecution Service more.

And in 2020, the Conservative government's Home Office produced its own report on child sexual exploitation, which directly states that a wide range of people were involved – from street gangs to those who outwardly led a decent lifestyle.

An equally wide range of nationalities were involved in the crimes, but, according to research, the majority were white English.

What-Keir-Starmer-answered

On Monday, January 6, Keir Starmer was set to give a speech about the problems of the National Health Service. But Musk's accusations that he had become “complicit in an insult to Britain” were hard to ignore.

Starmer stated that when he worked in the prosecutor's office, he reopened previously closed and allegedly unproven cases of violence and coercion of minors into prostitution. And also brought the first high-profile case about it – against an ethnic gang.

Without naming Musk, Starmer said that “those who spread lies and misinformation are not thinking about the victims, but about themselves”.

He also defended Jess Phillips of the Home Office and her decision not to launch a national investigation into new cases of child abuse, leaving it at the local level.

According to him, she has done for victims of abuse a thousand times more than those who attack it.

“I like the sharpness and sharpness of politics, active debates.., but they should be based on facts and truth, not on lies, not on [statements] of those who are so desperate for attention that they are ready to humiliate themselves and their country,” – Starmer stated. In these words, one can see a jab not only at Musk, but also at the political opponents of Labor within the country.

How the British government reacted

The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yvette Cooper made a proposal to further strengthen the fight against sexual exploitation of children.

She proposed, in particular, to introduce criminal liability for professionals who work with children – if they do not report to the police about cases of violence known to them.

And for the next few weeks, she announced a large package of bills aimed at combating the exploitation of children on the Internet.

At the same time, Cooper said that her department made the right decision not to conduct a nationwide investigation.

Professor Alexis Jay also spoke out against a new national investigation. In her opinion, authorities at all levels should simply implement the recommendations that have already been made.

The shadow justice minister (representative of the Conservative Party, currently in opposition) Robert Jenrick, on the contrary, demanded a national investigation, although when the party was in power, such an initiative did not come from it.

The Conservatives said that it was more effective to conduct investigations at the local rather than national level.

Thus, Elon Musk, albeit in a provocative and simply brutal form, once again made the painful topic of child sexual exploitation for Britain almost the main one today. The front pages of newspapers for the second day are dedicated to her.

What's happening between Musk and the British far-right

This scandal has another important offshoot. The topic of violence against British children by migrants and people from Asian or African countries is one of the most popular among the British far-right.

At the same time, their political positions in the UK are not strong, and street demonstrations are suppressed by the police in one way or another – and in the summer of 2024 Musk already sharply criticized the British authorities for this.

In December, Elon Musk met in the US with a British politician who is claiming the right-wing electorate, the leader of the Reform UK party, Nigel Farage. The latter even stated that Musk was ready to finance his party.

But in a stream of tweets about Britain these days, Musk said the party needed a new leader. He also called in caps lock for the immediate release from prison of Tommy Robinson, one of Britain’s leading far-right figures with four convictions. He is currently serving an 18-month sentence for contempt of court, where he repeated false statements about a Syrian refugee.

However, Robinson will find it difficult to integrate into active British political life. Farage is still a representative of the establishment that forms the basis of local politics.

And Robinson, who worked in the technical department at Luton Airport, got his first term in 2003 for attacking a police officer who tried to break up a drunken brawl involving him.

What will Donald Trump say

Elon Musk is not the first to support the far-right. He spoke in support of the “Alternative for Germany” and did a lot to get the American right to side with Trump. So much so that he became the de facto closest adviser to the new American president.

Now, writes BBC diplomatic correspondent James Landale, all the main political forces are wondering what to expect from such a tandem.

British conservatives have been cooperating with Elon Musk for a long time, but now some of their representatives have raised voices that demanding freedom for Tommy Robinson is “frankly dangerous” .

Labor in general also takes a restrained position. Mainly fearing that Elon Musk will really start financing Reform UK (by law it is not possible to do this directly, but through British legal entities – without hindrance) and will dramatically strengthen its position.

Remembering how during Trump's first term the whole world was awake and waiting to see who he would target on Twitter this time, Landale states that “American social diplomacy network has returned, and part of it is aimed at us”.

Only now in the USA there is also Musk, and both do not hold back in their statements.