Elon Musk stormed further into British politics on Sunday, calling for Nigel Farage to stand aside as leader of the right-wing Reform UK party.
“The Reform Party needs a new leader,” Musk wrote on X, the social media site he owns. “Farage doesn’t have what it takes.”
Farage said he disagreed with the tech billionaire’s assessment.
Musk has for the past few days been posting frequently about British politics, often referring to the child sexual abuse scandal in which a gang of mostly British Asian men perpetrated decades of abuse against mostly poor, white girls while the authorities failed to intervene.
The tensions around the scandal contributed to race riots that took place in August, during which Musk also clashed with the United Kingdom’s government.
Against this backdrop, Musk’s strident criticism of centrist and center-left politicians like Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips, a Home Office minister, is not unexpected — the Tesla entrepreneur’s politics have veered further and further right on immigration in recent years, and he often picks fights online with left-wing leaders.
His schism with Farage, a darling of the anti-immigration movement, is more surprising. Earlier on Sunday, when asked in a television interview about insults and semi-truths Musk had thrown at Labour politicians, Farage defended Musk’s right to freedom of speech.
But Farage disagreed with Musk’s endorsement of fascist figurehead Tommy Robinson, who is currently serving a prison sentence for contempt of court.
Musk “has a whole range of opinions, some of which I agree with very strongly, and others of which I’m more reticent about,” Farage said on Friday.
In response to Musk’s call to stand down on Sunday, Farage tweeted: “Well, this is a surprise! Elon is a remarkable individual, but on this I am afraid I disagree.”
Speculation has been rife that the world’s richest man could make a significant financial intervention into U.K. politics, as he did in the 2024 American election which saw Donald Trump win and Musk gain the president-elect’s ear and a role advising on a major government shake-up.
Musk’s post that Reform would be better off without Farage — under whose leadership the party has seen electoral and political success — seems to throw into doubt any such injection of cash.
Conversely, Musk tweeted approvingly about a piece written by Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch in the Mail on Sunday in which she called for a full public enquiry into the scandal of numerous separate gangs of Asian men abusing girls in towns around the country.
There have been several investigations into appalling abuse suffered by women and girls around Britain by gangs of pedophiles, including a national-level enquiry in 2022 set up by the Conservative government.
Badenoch said she wants a new inquiry to “start by considering the likely racial or religious motivation of these crimes.”
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