LONDON — Elon Musk loathes Keir Starmer’s government. The feeling isn’t mutual: Despite Musk’s public hostility to the U.K., British ministers are still embracing his social media platform, X.
One surprising beneficiary from the Westminster bubble’s obsession with X is the widely-followed aggregator account, Politics UK.
U.K. government advisers have been tapping up Politics UK — which pumps out daily rapid-fire X posts about SW1 developments — for occasional interviews with Starmer’s most senior lawmakers as part of their broadcast media round.
Over the summer the account has featured Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson promoting the government’s free school meals policy and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds on Britain’s response to the U.S. bombing Iran; and asked Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to explain the U.K.’s small boat crossings treaty with France.
But not everyone in Westminster is a fan of the account, with critics claiming its success is piggybacking off reporting from struggling traditional media outlets without reward, while its often concise one-sentence posts lack nuance.
“Quite often there is no attribution to quotes, toplines or pic[ture]s they tweet,” said one political journalist who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “I find that slightly parasitic, as they will be monetizing their clicks.”
Owen Meredith, chief executive of the News Media Association trade body that represents media organizations, praised social media platforms as a way for people to access news.
But he warned “the critical issue is consumers’ understanding of the sources of that content and the brands they can truly trust,” adding that the use of news content by aggregators required “urgent scrutiny.”
Many of Politics UK’s posts start with the flashing red siren emoji plus “NEW:” before offering a one sentence breaker, often only linking to an original story in a follow-up post.
“It doesn’t intend to create the news,” said Politics UK’s founder and co-director, Bailey Nash-Gardner. “It intends to share it.”
That formula has driven its high follower count, which includes numerous MPs, journalists and peers, leaving Cabinet comms chiefs unable to resist its reach.
“We don’t normally have to do too much of the demanding and groveling ourselves,” Nash-Gardner said, revealing it had been special advisers pitching the interviews to him.
Cabinet strategists see it as a way of communicating with a wider audience that doesn’t engage with traditional platforms, according to a figure familiar with the government’s thinking who was not authorized to speak on the record.
Gap in the market
Aggregating political news in an arresting manner on social media is not a new concept.
The Politics For All account on X’s predecessor platform Twitter gained notoriety during the Covid-19 pandemic for posting speedy, emoji-laden tweets which frequently went viral.
But the page, which was accused at the time of distorting stories to go viral, was permanently banned in January 2022 after Twitter, which had stricter rules pre-Musk, said it violated rules on “manipulation and spam.”
Politics For All’s demise created a gap in the market for something new, targeting audiences wanting concise updates.
Nash-Gardner bought the Politics UK account in June 2022 when he was just 17 years old, and recruited two members of the former Politics For All team in early 2023. The account had previously been posting “click baity right-wing news” without much engagement under its previous owner, whose identity is not publicly available.
“We were much more selective with the stories that we were sharing,” Nash-Gardner said, and “ma[de] them shorter and snappier.”
The page’s follower count rose from 30,000 in February 2023 to more than 367,000 by August 2025, and the outfit now has three or four voluntary admins trawling through the news each day swapping ideas on WhatsApp.
Nash-Gardner still works for Tory MP Andrew Rosindell as his constituency office manager, but the team receives income from adverts generated below X posts, and from a Patreon page, where people can donate money for extra content.
He has also created accounts covering U.S. politics, global affairs and a rebuttal unit, and has a website.
Core business
Politics UK’s Cabinet interviews were viewed more than 136,000 times — but Nash-Gardner says bagging time with high profile politicians isn’t his top goal.
“They don’t actually perform as well as some of the other tweets,” he said, explaining that keeping followers who are used to their short posts engaged is tricky.
Some journalists are sanguine about the service Politics UK is providing.
“The account just seems to summarize and then re-up stories that could move the political market in Westminster, which I think is a service to us all,” a second long-serving political journalist said.
But the first journalist quoted above said sharing headlines without deeper nuance could negatively impact companies with already squeezed resources.
“Lots of publishers and outlets are cutting back,” they said. “People reading a headline on this X account without going to the outlet’s website or socials has further potential to erode.”
The Metro newspaper’s senior politics reporter, Craig Munro, was also skeptical of the likelihood of users reading the whole article.
“I doubt anyone is clicking on the links to the source stories below their tweets, because they’ll feel they’ve got everything they need from the ultra-processed version,” he argued.
Nash-Gardner acknowledges the account’s relationship with Westminster journalists is mixed. “Some journalists send us in their stories … other journalists have us blocked,” he said.
Times they are a-changing
But some experts think ministers could be missing the mark given that younger generations are turning to short form video content on newer platforms like TikTok.
Sophia Smith Galer, a journalist and founder of the Viralect consultancy, which produces video content, said politicians had been reluctant “to move toward the platforms where we know audiences are moving to for news and information.”
She questioned why the government hadn’t emulated Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage and taken the changes to X under Musk’s ownership “as an opportunity to move in large swathes to developing their own followings and content.”
“Politicians, of course, are very busy,” Smith Galer added. “They also have teams. They have people who can literally be assigned [to] growing and developing social media strategies.”
The No. 10 TikTok account hasn’t been updated since July 2022, with Downing Street reportedly relying on influencers promoting policies.
For some, though, Starmer’s fortunes will rest on the substance of his message rather than the packaging.
“Nobody knows what Keir’s about,” said former Downing Street Director of Communications Guto Harri, arguing policy failures were at fault. “It’s the occupational hazard of being the comms person that you get blamed when people don’t want to actually acknowledge that the problem is leadership.”
While praising the “more-the-merrier” approach to modern platforms, Harri said it ultimately couldn’t replace having a coherent story.
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