ANALYSIS | Elon Musk is on a tear as he shakes up politics in Europe. What’s his endgame? | CBC News

As if having the ear of incoming U.S. president Donald Trump weren’t enough, tech billionaire Elon Musk has been on a tear this week, trashing European politicians on both the left and right, and using posts on his social media platform, X, to disrupt politics across the continent.

The French president, politicians in Germany and officials with the European Commission have all felt Musk’s online wrath, on issues concerning their electability and alleged hypocrisy. But it’s his withering attacks on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other U.K. politicians that have stood out.

In a 72-hour span starting over the weekend, Musk suggested King Charles should fire Starmer and call a new election, and pushed the false claim that Starmer was “deeply complicit in mass rapes” and should be sent to prison. 

Musk also posted that it might be up to the United States to “liberate” Britons from their “tyrannical government.”

These accusations have centred on Starmer’s role in an ugly chapter of Britain’s recent judicial history, concerning the prosecution of gangs of mostly British Pakistani men who groomed and sexually exploited thousands of girls between roughly 1997 and 2013.

Starmer was the head of the country’s Crown prosecution system starting in 2008 and oversaw many of the criminal prosecutions. Musk, without any evidence and in the face of repeated inquiries that said otherwise, has blamed Starmer for inaction.

A 2022 inquiry headed by Scottish child protection expert Prof. Alexis Jay concluded that while there was no prosecutorial cover-up, local authorities — but not Starmer — had made mistakes. 

Musk also smeared Jess Phillips, the Labour cabinet minister now in charge of women’s safeguarding, calling her a “rape genocide” apologist for refusing to heed calls for another national inquiry — even though Jay has said a new inquiry would only delay implementing the recommendations from her report.

Longtime U.K. politics watcher Tim Bale at Queen Mary University of London says Musk’s incendiary accusations have put Labour on the defensive and provided fresh ammunition to opponents on the political right.

“In all my years of covering British politics, I can’t remember an incident like this,” Bale told CBC News. “[Musk’s] goal seems to be to destabilize the British government and also to emphasize to Donald Trump that this is not an administration he wants to be friends with.”

France, Norway raise concerns

Starmer’s Labour Party is one of the few left-of-centre governments remaining in Europe, with recent elections witnessing seismic shifts to the right, including in Italy, Slovakia and the Netherlands.

Germany’s Social Democrats may be the next to fall, with elections coming in February and Chancellor Olaf Scholz widely expected to go down in defeat.

Musk has endorsed the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and has said he plans to use X to host a discussion with its leader, Alice Weidel, who’s a fierce critic of multiculturalism. Some prominent AfD members have been ostracized for their failure to condemn the war crimes of the Nazis.

On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron slammed Musk for “directly intervening” in elections in Europe. Other EU leaders want to see regulators impose fines and other legal sanctions on Musk for improperly using his social media platform. 

Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre was quoted by Reuters as saying Musk’s political influence has become deeply troubling, and a spokesman for Spain’s government said Tuesday that social media platforms must always act with “absolute neutrality.”

Bale says the aim of Musk’s intervention may be to coerce unfriendly European governments into backing off from tougher legislation that could hurt tech companies. The U.K., for example, has just brought in a new digital regulations act with strengthened oversight of big tech companies and their business models.

“Perhaps [Musk is] going to make it more difficult for the British government to regulate social media platforms,” said Bale.

WATCH | Germany says Musk is interfering in upcoming election: 

Germany accuses Elon Musk of interfering in their upcoming election

Germany’s government is accusing Elon Musk of trying to influence their upcoming election after he expressed support for the far-right AfD party in an op-ed. Musk’s op-ed was published in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper over the weekend, and it was met by criticism from politicians and the resignation of the paper’s opinion editor.

Fighting with Farage

But having friendly relations with Musk seems no guarantee of avoiding his wrath.

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK who only three weeks ago lunched at Trump’s Mar-a-Largo estate with Musk and expected the tech mogul to make a big donation to his increasingly popular party, suddenly found himself on the outside, as Musk called for him to be replaced as party leader. 

Reform UK champions policies such as deep cuts to immigration, eliminating net-zero emission goals and drastically reducing taxes and spending.

The rift between the two men appears to stem from Musk’s insistence that far-right activist and anti-Islam crusader  Tommy Robinson should be freed from jail. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, is a former member of an openly fascist British political party who has served multiple terms in jail, including for fraud and contempt of court.

Both Farage and Starmer — who rarely agree on much — contend that Robinson’s use of Facebook Live and flouting a judge’s order by broadcasting banned details of a 2018 sex exploitation case in the community of Huddersfield nearly resulted in a mistrial.

Farage, who has been trying to moderate his Reform UK’s image to attract more Conservative supporters, has said courting Robinson could cause “immense harm” to his party. But Musk has tweeted Robinson deserves to be freed — and that Farage should be fired.

Starmer claps back

In one of his strongest public statements since he became prime minister this past summer, Starmer took aim at Musk on Tuesday, accusing the world’s richest man of spreading lies.

“I’m prepared to call out this for what it is. We’ve seen this playbook many times, whipping up intimidation and threats of violence, hoping that the media will amplify it,” said Starmer. “When the poison of the far right leads to serious threats to Jess Phillips and others, then in my book, a line has been crossed.”

Many in the U.K. also blamed Musk for inflaming tempers and inciting violence in the aftermath of the killings of three young people at a dance class in Southport, England, this summer. Musk reposted conspiracy theories from far-right accounts linking the incident to mass immigration, stating that “civil war” in the U.K. was inevitable. 

Just how much traction Musk’s interventions are getting with the British public is difficult to gauge. In the aftermath of Musk’s social media attacks, pollster YouGov reposted its latest poll from November, underscoring that at the time, Musk was unpopular with 64 per cent of the British public. 

On the other hand, the Labour Party may be concerned that Musk’s attacks — whether truthful or not — could nonetheless cause damage. 

A Labour cabinet minister appeared to respond to Musk’s recent accusations by announcing that people who fail to report child sexual abuse could face criminal prosecution as part of a new law to be introduced later in 2025 — one of the recommendations in Prof. Jay’s report.

For Starmer, and other European politicians, attacking Musk comes with risks, says Bale of Saint Mary’s.  

“They know that Musk is really close to Trump, and by offending Musk, they may well turn Trump against them.”