UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemns Elon Musk for spreading false claims about child abuse and far-right disinformation targeting Britain.
"We've witnessed this tactic previously": British PM asserts Elon Musk is disseminating "falsehoods and inaccurate information."
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer refrained from explicitly naming Elon Musk, though his intended target was evident when he informed reporters that individuals were "propagating falsehoods and inaccurate information" concerning child abuse within his nation, erroneously accusing the U.K.'s leader of neglecting to prosecute foreign-born perpetrators.
"We have observed this established pattern on numerous occasions — the instigation of intimidation and threats of violence, with the expectation that the media will amplify it," Starmer stated at a press conference on Monday, as reported by the BBC. "Those engaged in disseminating falsehoods and inaccurate information as extensively and broadly as feasible are not concerned with the victims; their interests lie solely with themselves."
Starmer, who in the preceding year steered his center-left Labour Party to victory following 14 years of Conservative governance, was addressing unfounded allegations propagated by Musk and others suggesting his inaction in addressing the menace of so-called "grooming gangs" preying on children for sexual exploitation. Prior to assuming leadership of the Labour Party, Starmer held the position of director of the Crown Prosecution Service from 2008 to 2013 and was the initial individual to initiate legal proceedings against one such group, according to The New York Times.
"Upon my departure from office, we had the highest recorded number of child sexual abuse cases undergoing prosecution," Starmer remarked on Monday. "The victims in these instances endured egregious abuse and were subsequently ignored."
Musk, who disseminated the erroneous claims on his social media platform, X, has for several months directed far-right disinformation towards the incumbent British government. During the summer of 2024, Musk asserted that "civil unrest is unavoidable" in Britain following assaults on immigrants by right-wing extremists across the country, spurred by a false assertion — circulated on X — that a child murderer had been an asylum-seeker (the alleged murderer was, in actuality, a native-born British citizen).
More recently, Musk has advocated for the release of the fascist anti-immigrant activist Tommy Robinson and, over the weekend, posed the question to his followers regarding their belief in whether the U.S. government should forcibly "liberate" Britain. Starmer, in his remarks on Monday, accused Musk and others of "attempting to derive some vicarious pleasure from street violence endorsed by individuals like Tommy Robinson," as per the Associated Press.
Musk's backing of the British far right transpires following his expenditure of over $250 million to elect Donald Trump and aligns with his public endorsement of Alternative for Germany, an extremist party deemed by critics to be led by Nazi sympathizers.