myLon Musk seems to have many obsessions. The world’s richest man is evangelical about electric vehicles, space travel and Donald Trump. Another of his interests may still have profound consequences for the United Kingdom: British politics.
The billionaire is reportedly considering becoming the biggest donor in history with an £80million payment to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
Like many who embraced Trump’s bellicose brand of right-wing populism, Musk was radicalized by his frustration over the shutdowns, according to his observers.
Irritated by the way manufacturing at his Tesla car plants was affected, he began spending more time online and then tested the limits of the rules on misinformation set by Twitter, as it was then known.
Now, having helped propel Trump to the White House, he is said to be turning his interest to Britain.
Reform sources say they are unaware of Musk’s spending plans, although he has also denied it. But if the Tesla and
Two years after his purchase of But Musk went further and used his own story to amplify the message of far-right activist and convicted criminal Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson.
At the time of this year’s riots in English cities, Musk was engaged in a full-blown attack on the Labor government, claiming that “civil war is inevitable” and describing the prime minister as a “two-tier Keir,” in an echo of a position that police were treating white far-right “protesters” more harshly than minority groups.
However, a suggestion emerged last weekend that Musk might trade words for deeds regarding Britain when the Sunday Times reported that could be about to make an £80 million donation to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party and believed the MP would be the next prime minister of the United Kingdom.
Musk denied the claim on Thursday, but Reform UK had been conspicuously silent on the matter, while Farage boasted last month that he hoped to enlist the help of his “new friend Elon” in the next general election. A major donor to his party even sounded quite optimistic, telling The Guardian this week: “Watch this space.”
Musk’s fortune has risen by $133bn (£104.4bn) so far this year to $362bn, coming from a roughly 13% shareholding in Tesla and his ownership in several companies.
The reasons behind Musk’s apparent animosity towards Starmer (and interest in the UK) may be more complicated.
The range of theories about why the UK is in Musk’s crosshairs includes the notion that he has come to see Britain as the center of what he has described as the “awakened mind virus”, which he blames. for her estranged daughter’s gender transition. .
A more exotic theory – based in part on Musk’s time active on X – is that his tweets in response to breaking news in the UK are the result of a tendency to stay up late at night in USA.
“I don’t think I should tweet after 3am,” Musk told the BBC last year.
However, one of the most obvious explanations relates to the clear clash between Musk’s libertarian, ultra-free speech vision that line.
Musk is “accountable to no one,” complained in August Peter Kyle, science and technology secretary and the man directly responsible for the British government’s engagement with social media companies. What may also have irritated Musk is the role of Labor figures, including Morgan McSweeney, now Starmer’s chief of staff, in founding the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a critic of Musk’s removal of what had been Twitter’s guardrails against hate speech. . In October, Musk had issued a declaration of “war” against the CCDH, which he described as a “criminal organization” that he would “persecute.”
However, there is no indication that holding Musk to account will stop a foray into right-wing politics in the UK. Beyond a near-ceaseless stream of tweets, how Musk might amplify his imprint on British public life is more opaque.
Musk could get around strict regulations on foreign donations by either donating money through X’s British arm or obtaining British citizenship, which his father, Errol, has said he is eligible for because his grandmother was British.
Musk may also be tempted to deepen the debate with British industry and become more involved with the Starmer government.
Musk’s last high-profile engagement in the UK was in November last year, when he attended the inaugural AI Security Summit at Bletchley Park, home of codebreakers Enigma. Those who met Musk at the Bletchley summit said he was polite, chatty and surrounded by a surprisingly minimal entourage, apparently handling many of the official emails about the event himself.
This has convinced a former government adviser that discussing AI policy is probably the best way Labor could build a useful relationship with Musk. The technology mogul, who has created his own artificial intelligence company, xAI, has constantly warned about the dangers of unbridled technology development. Speaking at the summit, he said: “There is some chance, above zero, that AI will kill us all.”
The former adviser said the establishment of the UK AI Safety Institute by Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, a world first at the time, could carry some weight for Musk.
“He cares about AI safety and has for years. Having an adult conversation with him about the UK’s world-leading work on the national security risks of AI seems like a good starting point,” the former adviser said, adding that Rishi Sunak would be a good emissary even if Starmer found him politically unpalatable. . “Musk doesn’t suffer fools and Sunak really knows his stuff about AI.”
Another option would be to send Kyle, who has impressed with his understanding of his mandate, and national security adviser Jonathan Powell. “It would show seriousness,” said the former advisor.
An indication of the current government’s wariness towards Musk can be gauged by the extent to which correspondence between Musk’s office and the Cabinet Office over the Bletchley Park summit was so redacted when it was handed over this week to The Guardian after a freedom of information request.
It included an email from “Mr Musk’s office” to No 10 in November last year informing Sunak that Musk would not attend the second day of the summit “due to critical matters”. At that time, Musk’s absence had gone as planned, since it was more about heads of government.
“That’s a shame. But of course we understand,” No. 10 told Musk, the emails show.
Musk could still build a bridgehead to the Starmer government beyond his provocative social media posts. Mr.
The nightmare for Starmer is that Musk will be able to heavily back Farage and use his considerable resources, even without donating tens of millions of pounds.
A former Twitter employee in London who was at the company when Musk took over said: “At the back of Twitter there were always ways to ensure that people – we called them VITs (Very Important Tweeters) – could be amplified, although they never were. you would do do it. But not long after he fired a lot of people I realized he had that amplification tag in his own name, so whether you followed him or not, it showed up on everyone’s feed.
“That’s something you could choose to do for anyone else, whether it’s in an election in the US or the UK, whether it’s trying to influence people’s perceptions of, say, Keir Starmer, or boosting someone like Nigel Farage.
“However, I think Twitter and now X are like a crack addiction for him. “He is clearly chasing a particular success all the time and ended up self-radicalizing himself with the platform he bought.”
That platform has already had a tangible impact on the fortunes of Britain’s far-right, which had been struggling to reach large audiences after being deplatformed by major social media companies.
Its acquisition of Twitter changed that, according to Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate, who notes that Yaxley-Lennon explicitly thanked Musk during a rally in July.
He said: “Several of the most prominent figures who spread disinformation during this year’s unrest have had their X accounts returned due to Musk’s amnesty. “Musk’s decision to platform, engage and amplify extreme figures in the UK is having a tangible effect on our politics and on our streets.”
Musk has been contacted for comment.