Elon Musk
faces UK backlash after boosting far-right activist Tommy Robinson
X owner and
Donald Trump ally accused of spreading “poison” after he backs jailed activist.
Elon Musk
tweeted that authorities should “free Tommy Robinson.” |
January 2,
2025 3:36 pm CET
By Noah
Keate
https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-uk-backlash-boost-far-right-activist-tommy-robinson/
LONDON —
Elon Musk is facing fierce criticism from British parliamentarians after he
called for far-right ringleader Tommy Robinson to be released from prison.
The X owner
and key ally of Donald Trump tweeted Thursday morning that authorities should
“free Tommy Robinson.”
Robinson,
the controversial English Defense League founder whose anti-immigration rallies
in the U.K. attract thousands, was jailed for 18 months last October after
breaching a court order.
Musk's
comments come amid an ongoing feud with the U.K.'s governing Labour Party — and
just days after the tech billionaire spoke out in support of Germany's
far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
"Musk's
support not just for Tommy Robinson, but also the AfD in Germany, shows just
how big a problem he is for democracy as well as the reputation of those who
cosy up to him like Nigel Farage and Liz Truss," Labour MP Stella Creasy —
whose constituency saw a major counter-demonstration against the far right amid
riots last summer — told POLITICO.
Truss, the
former British prime minister, has previously expressed support for Musk and
said his proposed Department for Government Efficiency, set to feature in
Trump's second presidency, was "needed in Britain."
Reform UK
Leader Farage meanwhile met Musk at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in December and
has talked up the prospect of receiving a donation from him. Reform — which has
been at pains to distance itself from the far right as it takes on Labour and
the Conservatives — declined to comment on Musk's latest statements Thursday.
Robinson was
imprisoned last year after he admitted to breaching a court order relating to
false claims about a Syrian schoolboy he had made in a documentary. Musk on
Thursday approvingly shared the documentary to his hundreds of millions of
followers on X.
A second
Labour MP, granted anonymity to speak candidly, called Musk's language
"dangerous," warning that "at a time when communities need to
come and work together, we have someone with a lot of influence sowing
divisions and spreading hate."
A third
Labour MP said it was "so sad people fall for this manipulative
rhetoric."
A fourth
sought to praise Musk, while drawing a red line over his backing of Robinson,
saying: “I don’t think Tommy Robinson has anything to say about government
efficiency, or anything that reckons with the condition of working
people."
They added:
"There is something remarkable about Elon Musk’s startup spirit. Backing
Tommy Robinson is a perversion of it.”
Danny
Chambers, an MP for the centrist Liberal Democrats and the party's spokesperson
on mental health, said it was "really concerning that a billionaire with
his own social media platform is supporting a far-right activist."
"Musk
has the financial resources and the social media reach to influence the news
agenda and the narrative, and so his support for Tommy Robinson could be hugely
damaging to our political discourse," Chambers added.
Musk's
intervention has also reignited discussion of whether the U.K. government
should tighten campaign finance laws to prevent the world's richest man from
flooding politics with cash before the next election.
As a U.S.
citizen from South Africa, Musk would not be allowed to make direct donations
of more than £500 to U.K. political parties. But election finance experts have
argued that he could set up a new U.K. registered company or an unincorporated
association to sidestep the rules.
Creasy said:
"The money and organization that extremists now have access to to spread
their poison across the world is a threat that can't be ignored or sidelined.
"It’s
time not just to enforce and reform campaign finance laws but also to call to
account all those who indulge them, encourage them and avoid standing up to
them."
Starmer
steers clear
While Labour
MPs were quick to slam Musk's intervention, Prime Minister Keir Starmer kept
out of it.
Unlike in
Germany, where Chancellor Olaf Scholz directly hit back at Musk's boosting of
the far-right AfD, No. 10 Downing Street steered clear of the row Thursday.
In Musk’s
latest attack on Labour Thursday, he claimed that the party had failed to
initiate an inquiry into historic child abuse in the northern English town of
Oldham only because “it will show that those in power were complicit in the
cover-up.”
He also
implied that Starmer — who launched extensive reforms to how the Crown
Prosecution Service handles child sex abuse cases — did not do enough to
prosecute child grooming gangs when he ran the organization between 2008 and
2013.
In a sign of
Musk’s growing influence, the opposition Conservatives — voted out of office in
July after 14 years in government — spent Thursday echoing his demand for a
focus on tackling “rape gangs” in the U.K. with a dedicated public inquiry.
An inquiry
into the handling of child sexual abuse in the U.K. already wrapped up in 2022,
but the Tories now argue it did not go far enough and have demanded the release
of ethnicity data on perpetrators.
Matt
Honeycombe-Foster contributed to this report.
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