Elon Musk appears to have conquered Britain, if only via tweet. The right-wing American billionaire has caused chaos this week by unleashing a tweetstorm against Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party and current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Musk has supported Starmer since his election, and this week, he took matters into his own hands when he used his X platform to urge King Charles to dissolve the British Parliament and oust the new Prime Minister.
In general, Musk has sought to portray Starmer’s government as a corrupt and incompetent regime that is harming Britain. To cap off his messaging efforts, Musk retweeted a message this week from a commenter that read: “Who else thinks the King should dissolve Parliament and call a general election for the good and safety of the country? The King needs to act before it’s too late!” Musk responded to the user’s post by simply saying: “Yes.”
And that’s not all Musk has done. The American billionaire also seized on a scandal involving street gangs grooming children and used the episode to accuse Starmer of failing to hold his country’s paedophiles to account, claiming Starmer was “complicit in the rape of Britain.” The scandal in question concerned the phenomenon of “grooming gangs” in northern England, which are said to be largely made up of sexual predators of South Asian or British Pakistani heritage. Musk was subsequently accused of “politicizing” the rape of young girls as a means of pushing his right-wing agenda.
Meanwhile, Musk has come out in support of Tommy Robinson, a far-right political activist and convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record who is currently serving a prison sentence. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon, has also been called an “anti-Islam” activist. He has been accused of Islamophobia. “Free Tommy Robinson!” Musk tweeted. Robinson/Lennon is the founder of the now-defunct English Defence League, an organization that lobbied against Islamic extremism. Musk has caused so much trouble that even Trump’s conservative political allies have had to distance themselves from the comments. Indeed, Bloomberg reports that “senior politicians on the British right” have reached out to “Donald Trump allies, urging the U.S. president-elect’s team not to endorse far-right British activist Tommy Robinson.”
Why is Musk treating Starmer so badly? No one knows for sure, though it’s hard not to see this as a broader effort to make the next liberal government look bad so that a different (presumably conservative) one can soon take its place. Musk, however, does not appear to be the first wealthy American ruler to tamper with UK politics. Indeed, the connection between American billionaires and efforts to reshape Britain into a right-wing dystopia has been well established for some time.
The US-led campaign to make Britain more right-wing
One reason Musk and his cohorts might be so wary of Starmer is that he is the first British prime minister in years who has not had political affiliations with the American right. Most notable among them is Boris Johnson, who served as prime minister between 2019 and 2022, a self-described libertarian among Trump supporters, and whose policies have also been widely denounced by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank that is part of a global libertarian network known as Atlas. Although founded by a British citizen, the Atlas Network is based in the United States and has connections to a variety of American organizations, including the Heritage Foundation and the pro-corporate American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Before her rise to become Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, Liz Truss notoriously met with a number of right-wing think tanks in the United States, including Heritage, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and ALEC. Later, when she became prime minister, much of Truss’s economic policy agenda was largely developed by the International Energy Agency. When Truss tried to solve Britain’s problems with massive tax cuts for billionaires (a notably Trumpian solution), she was quickly laughed off by the government and abruptly resigned. Since resigning as prime minister, Truss has done little but admire outside of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak, the interim prime minister who served between Truss and Starmer, has also enjoyed close ties to America and tried to spread liberal “free market” policies, much of which were deeply unpopular. Musk’s Propaganda Role
The effort to turn Western countries into conservative strongholds has been bolstered by propaganda efforts designed to undermine confidence in liberal governments. It’s worth noting that at the same time that Musk has sought to publicly attack Starmer’s liberal government, he has also increasingly aligned himself with various organizations and forces that have supported Britain’s cultural and economic drift to the right.
I recently wrote that Musk is essentially the new Steve Bannon, meaning that Musk—like Bannon before him—helped Trump win the election by acting as a message master who can whip up 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 nationalism to British political culture. Bannon notably supported Tommy Robinson long before Musk began tweeting about him. Bannon has been publicly praising the right-wing agitator since 2018. In a leaked audio recording, Bannon shouted: “Tommy Robinson is the backbone of this country. If you lose people like Tommy Robinson, you don’t have a country.” In February last year, Bannon appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland (along with Liz Truss) and called Robinson a “hero.”
But what Bannon did in a relatively quiet way, Musk does in broad daylight. Through his X platform, Musk has been able to promote a slew of right-wing conspiracy theories and misinformation that appear designed to undermine public confidence in Starmer’s government. Before his pro-Robinson tweets and comments about dissolving parliament and street rape, Musk also used his platform to comment on a stabbing spree that led to riots across Britain. Musk’s comments were also credited with exacerbating the riots. Musk also recently called for a new election 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 UK look similar to those he is conducting in the US. These efforts can also be seen as a continuation of a broader effort in the US. The American political right uses racial and economic grievances as a means of radicalising lower- and middle-class people and directing them towards economic agendas designed by and for the wealthy. However, this programme may work much better in the US than in the UK, where the average IQ may be slightly higher.
