LONDON — Elon Musk called for Britain’s prime minister to be jailed and flirted with a U.S. invasion of the country as his online feud with its Labour government cranked up a notch Monday.
Musk, tapped up for a government job in Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president, has rowed repeatedly with Starmer since his center-left administration came to power last year – and has launched a crusade in recent days about the state’s response to child sexual exploitation and its stance on Islamophobia.
“Prison for Starmer,” Musk posted on his X platform Monday, as he shared a post from an anonymous account claiming that Starmer prioritized tackling anti-Muslim abuse over condemning a child-killer. The billionaire followed that up with a poll asking whether America “should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government.”
Musk has waded into a tense debate in Britain over the state’s response to child sexual exploitation in recent days, attacking Starmer for his record as the country’s top prosecutor.
The Labour government recently rejected a national inquiry into grooming gangs, often of South Asian men, who targeted vulnerable young women in northern England, pointing to a series of inquiries on the issue.
A 2014 state-commissioned report by senior social worker Alexis Jay found that some 1,400 vulnerable children were targeted and sexually abused in the northern English town of Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. Jay blasted “collective failures” in the care system and said local authorities had failed to confront Pakistani-heritage perpetrators of the abuse, in part because some staff feared being labeled racist.
The findings of that report, and a subsequent local inquiry on exploitation in the town of Oldham, have since become rallying points for figures on the right of British politics.
As the British government searches for a response to Musk’s seemingly-endless, headline-grabbing interventions, Health Minister Karin Smyth hit back against Musk’s “wrong” claims Monday.
Smyth said Starmer had been “applauded” for his work as director of public prosecutions in “tackling these evil perpetrators and supporting victims” of grooming gangs.
“It would be more helpful if Mr Musk wanted to use his platform to support victims,” she said.
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