Musk’s obsession with Britain is complicated

Since the start of the year, Elon Musk has tweeted or reposted tweets about British politics, grooming gangs and child sexual abuse 48 times.

So what? Musk calls himself Chief Troll Officer for X, his social media platform, and in many of these tweets he’s trolled Keir Starmer personally. Yesterday Starmer responded. At a press conference meant to launch NHS reforms he indirectly accused Musk of spreading “lies and misinformation” about grooming in the UK, and of “cheerleading” for Tommy Robinson, a far-right anti-Muslim activist.

But why? What’s behind Musk’s obsession with the UK? Possible answers can be grouped under three headings:

• self-interest
• self-aggrandisement
• self-deception

Self-interest. The richest person in the world may be irritated by Britain’s Online Safety Act. When fully implemented this year, the act will allow Ofcom to fine social media companies up to 10 percent of global turnover if, for example, they fail to police content inciting violence or terrorism. A handful of social media users have already been arrested under Section 179 of the Act for sending “false information intended to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm”. Musk says he regards that sanction as criminalising free speech.

Self-aggrandisement. In the first few days of 2025 alone, Musk has also praised a populist Canadian politician and promised to live-stream a conversation with Alice Weidel, a far-right candidate for the German chancellorship.

Self-deception. In the case of British grooming gangs Musk has succumbed to a peculiarly potent form of confirmation bias –

• absorbing false information fed to him by an algorithm tuned at his instruction to favour inflammatory posts on X regardless of their veracity;
• recycling this information with crude exaggeration for 210 million followers; and
• garnishing it with an odd mixture of baseless accusations and bad jokes.

For instance, yesterday he tweeted a poll on whether “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government”. Later, after Starmer’s press conference, in which the PM rejected calls for a new grooming inquiry, he added: “Starmer was deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes. That’s what the inquiry would show.”

For the record, a 2022 report on child sex abuse in Telford found police were “nervous” on account of the mainly Asian suspects’ race, but there is no evidence Starmer resisted prosecutions out of “political correctness” or fear the far-right would exploit them.

On the contrary, as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013, he

• worked with the then-chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal to bring a landmark 2012 prosecution against a grooming gang of British Pakistani men in Rochdale;
• changed official guidance on child sexual exploitation to encourage police to investigate suspects and make it easier to bring complex cases to court; and
• created the post of special prosecutor for child abuse and sexual exploitation.

In 2011 a Times investigation by Andrew Norfolk counted 14 grooming gang prosecutions in the previous three years.

In 2022 the report of an independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation by Professor Alexis Jay counted 35 child grooming-related convictions in Starmer’s last three years as DPP.

For comparison. Kemi Badenoch, the new Conservative leader, has called for a new national inquiry into grooming gangs even though her party called for no such thing in 14 years in power. Starmer and Jess Phillips, his safeguarding minister, have rejected calls for a fresh inquiry on the basis that the Jay report was comprehensive and what’s needed now is action.

For context. Musk posts obsessively on X on a wide range of topics. He also finds time to run Tesla, SpaceX, X and other companies, and to be one of the world’s top 20 players of the videogame Diablo 4. He says he routinely works 16-hour days and has admitted using prescription ketamine when in a “negative frame of mind”.

What’s more… It’s not clear he regards the world in which he’s driven to meddle as entirely real. Two years ago he told the Joe Rogan podcast: “It’s likely we are living in a simulation.”