LONDON — Elon Musk “may have saved humanity” by purchasing X, a senior Conservative spokesperson declared — as the U.K.’s main opposition party continued to try and catch the tech billionaire’s eye.
“The Elon Musk purchase of X may have saved humanity,” Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith posted on the platform Musk owns Tuesday evening.
“With X becoming a true freedom of speech platform, the common ground of public opinion is no longer determined by a left-leaning elite,” he went on.
“Recent political earthquakes in the U.S., the U.K. and now Canada are a release of pent up democratic will as citizens regain their ability to speak freely.”
The high praise for Musk, who acquired X in 2022 and restored banned conservative accounts, including that of his future boss, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, comes as the the platform owner beefs with Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and riles up its center-left government.
Musk has made frequent attacks on the Labour government over law and order, free speech and economic policy since it entered power last July — and provoked the ire of Starmer after he demanded the release of jailed far-right agitator Tommy Robinson.
The Tories, fighting to see off the threat of Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform UK party on the right, have spent much of the past two weeks echoing the concerns of Musk about the British state’s handling of child sexual exploitation.
And there’s concern in Conservative circles at U.K. media reports Musk could donate up to $100 million to Farage’s Reform UK outfit — despite a recent tiff over Musk’s support for Robinson.
Griffith laid it on thick Tuesday, likening Musk’s buy-up of X to “Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press” which “created the preconditions for democracies to replace bad kings or clerics.”
Musk’s X, he said, was now providing the same tool “for unaccountable and failing bureaucratic states.”
His remarks chime with other Tories keen to get in Musk’s good books. Party Leader Kemi Badenoch said she was a “huge fan” of the X founder, who had been a “fantastic thing for freedom of speech.”
Amid the furore over his backing for the jailed Robinson, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said Sunday that Musk was “reasonable” to raise the state’s response to child sexual exploitation even if some of his specific language was “not appropriate.”
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