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Elon Musk faces UK backlash after boosting far-right activist Tommy Robinson

 


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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