Now, Elon Musk Is Trying to Upend British Politics

Elon Musk appears to have invaded Britain—if only via tweet. This week, the rightwing American billionaire stirred chaos by unleashing a tweet-storm against Keir Starmer, the Labor Party leader and current U.K. prime minister. Musk has had it out for Starmer ever since he was elected, and this week, he took things up a notch when he used his platform, X, to urge King Charles to dissolve Britain’s parliament and dethrone the new prime minister.

In general, Musk has attempted to depict Starmer’s government as a corrupt, incompetent regime that is harming Britain. To capstone that messaging effort, Musk reposted a message this week from a commenter that read: “Who also thinks the KING should Dissolve Parliament and order a General Election be called for the sake and security of the country? The King must ACT before it is too late!” Musk replied to the user’s post, stating merely: “Yes.”

That’s not all Musk got up to. The American billionaire also seized on a scandal involving child grooming street gangs and used the episode to accuse Starmer of failing to hold child rapists in his country to account, claiming Starmer was “complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN.” The scandal in question involves the phenomenon of “grooming gangs” in north England, which are said to be composed largely of perpetrators of South Asian or British Pakistani heritage. Musk was subsequently accused of “politicizing” the rape of young girls as a means of pushing his own rightwing agenda.

At the same time, Musk announced support for Tommy Robinson, a far-right political activist and convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record who is currently serving a prison term. Robinson, whose given name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has been called an “anti-Islam” activist and accused of Islamaphobia. “Free Tommy Robinson!” Musk posted. Robinson/Lennon is the founder of the English Defense League, a now defunct organization that lobbied against Islamic extremism. Musk stirred up so much trouble that conservative political allies of Trump reportedly had to distance themselves from the comments. Indeed, Bloomberg reports that “senior politicians on the UK right” reached out to “Donald Trump’s allies, urging the US President-elect’s team not to endorse British far-right activist Tommy Robinson.”

Why does Musk have it out for Starmer so bad? No one really knows for sure, though it’s difficult not to see it as a broader effort to make the incoming liberal government look bad so that a different (presumably conservative) government might soon take its place. That said, it’s not like Musk is the first American plutocrat to mess with U.K. politics. Indeed, the connection between U.S. billionaires and the effort to remake Britain into a rightwing dystopia, has been well-established for quite some time.

The U.S.-led push to make Britain more rightwing

One reason that Musk and his cohort may be freaking out so much about Starmer is that he is the first British prime minister in years who hasn’t enjoyed political affiliations with the American right. Boris Johnson, who served as PM between 2019 and 2022, notably schmoozed with pro-Trump folks, called himself a libertarian, and his policies were largely shaped by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think-tank that is part of a global libertarian network known as Atlas. While the Atlas Network was founded by a British citizen, it is based in the U.S. and enjoys associations with a variety of American organizations, including the Heritage Foundation and ALEC (the pro-corporate, American Legislative Exchange Council). Prior to her rise to become Britain’s shortest-tenured prime minister, the notorious Liz Truss met with a number of rightwing U.S. think tanks, including Heritage, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and ALEC. Later, when she became prime minister, much of Truss’s economic policy agenda was also largely developed by IEA. When Truss attempted to solve Britain’s woes with massive tax cuts for billionaires (a notably Trumpian solution), she was swiftly laughed out of government and abruptly resigned. Since stepping down from her PM role, Truss hasn’t done a whole lot except fangirl out over Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak, the interim prime minister who served between Truss and Starmer, also enjoyed dense ties to America and attempted to deploy “free market,” libertarian policies, the bulk of which were deeply unpopular.

Musk’s propaganda role

The effort to transform Western nations into conservative strongholds has been bolstered by propaganda efforts designed to shake confidence in liberal governments. It should be noted that, at the same time that Musk has sought to very publicly attack Starmer’s liberal government, he has also increasingly allied himself with many of the organizations and forces that have supported Britain’s cultural and economic drift towards the right.

I recently wrote that Musk is basically the new Steve Bannon, meaning that Musk—like Bannon before him—helped Trump get elected by serving as a messaging guru who could incite political support by tapping into voters’ cultural and economic grievances. Bannon, who helped Trump get elected in 2016, is also credited with helping to bring American-style nativism to British political culture. Bannon also notably supported Tommy Robinson long before Musk began tweeting about him. As far back as 2018, Bannon was openly complimenting the rightwing agitator. In leaked audio, Bannon ranted: “Tommy Robinson is the f***ing backbone of this country. You lose guys like Tommy Robinson, you’re not going to have a country,” he apparently said, of Britain. In February of last year, Bannon appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland (alongside Liz Truss) and called Robinson a “hero.”

What Bannon did in a relatively quiet fashion, however, Musk is doing in broad daylight. Through his platform X, Musk has managed to promote a slew of rightwing conspiracy theories and misinformation that seems designed to shake public confidence in Starmer’s government. Before his pro-Robinson tweets and his comments about dissolving parliament and street rapes, Musk also used his platform to comment on a stabbing episode that led to riots throughout Britain. Musk’s comments were even credited with exacerbating the riots. Musk also recently called for new elections so that Starmer could be voted out of office.

So while it may be happening on a different continent, Musk’s propaganda efforts in the U.K. would appear to be identical to the ones he’s carrying out in the U.S. Those efforts also can’t help but be seen as a continuation of a broader effort by the American political rightwing to use racial and economic grievances as a means of radicalizing lower and middle-class populations and herding them towards economic agendas that are designed by and for the wealthy. That said, this program may work a whole lot better in the U.S. than it has in Britain, where the average IQ may be slightly higher.