LONDON — A British minister said Friday that Elon Musk should focus on American politics rather than repeatedly criticizing the Labour government.
The X owner and key Donald Trump ally is deep in an ongoing feud with the U.K.’s governing Labour Party, tweeting his extensive disagreements with Prime Minister Keir Starmer over law and order, economic policy and free speech.
It’s prompted angry pushback from Labour MPs, particularly after Musk on Thursday demanded the release from jail of a controversial far-right activist, Tommy Robinson.
“Elon Musk is an American citizen and perhaps ought to focus on issues on the other side of the Atlantic,” Health Minister Andrew Gwynne told LBC radio Friday.
Gwynne was responding to Musk’s strident criticism of the way British authorities have responded to child sexual exploitation.
Musk slammed Labour for rejecting a national inquiry into child abuse in the north of England and launched a full-frontal attack on Prime Minister Keir Starmer over his record as the country’s top prosecutor.
Musk wrote on X, the social media site he owns: “In the U.K., serious crimes such as rape require the Crown Prosecution Service’s approval for the police to charge suspects. Who was the head of the CPS when rape gangs were allowed to exploit young girls without facing justice? Keir Starmer, 2008-2013.”
Demands for an inquiry into so-called “rape gangs” were picked up Thursday by Britain’s main opposition party, the Conservatives, which was voted out of office after a fourteen-year stint in July and similarly rejected demands for a national inquiry.
Speaking Friday, Gwynne pushed back at Musk’s characterization of the issue. He highlighted a string of local inquiries into child sexual exploitation alongside a wide-ranging national probe which reported in 2022.
“There comes a point where we don’t need more inquiries,” Wynne argued. “Had Elon Musk really paid attention to what’s been going on in this country, he might have recognized that there’ve already been inquiries.”
Musk on Thursday night again approvingly shared posts by Robinson, the far-right ringleader who was jailed in October for breaching a court order relating to libelous claims he made about a Syrian refugee schoolboy.
Musk accused media outlets who reported on his backing for Robinson, including POLITICO, of having “hid” that schoolgirls were being “systematically raped” by “migrant gangs,” and branded them “despicable human beings.”
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