LONDON — Keir Starmer’s U.K. government has a new line on Elon Musk: “get the hell out” of Britain.
The billionaire owner of X and Tesla has repeatedly attacked Starmer on his social media platform – and in September even called for the overthrow of his government.
Now Starmer’s ministers are biting back. Musk “thinks he can tell us how to run Britian,” Starmer’s energy secretary Ed Miliband, a former Labour leader, told the party’s annual conference in Liverpool on Wednesday. “We have a message for Elon Musk. Get the hell out of our politics and our country.”
The combative line is the strongest attack on Musk yet from a government that has frequently been in the billionaire’s cross-hairs.
Musk has accused Starmer of failing to protect girls from grooming gangs, prompting the U.K. prime minister to condemn those “spreading lies and misinformation” about the issue.
More recently, Musk appeared via video link at a rally organized by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson. He used the platform to warn that “violence is going to come” to the British people “whether you choose violence or not,” appealed to citizens to “fight back, or you die,” and urged a change of government in the U.K.
In his conference speech, Miliband directly linked Musk to Labour’s most potent domestic political opponnent, Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage, saying that both were part of a right-wing “global network who want to destroy the ties that bind our communities and our way of life.”
Musk, he said, “incites violence on our streets … calls for the overthrow of our elected government [and] is an enabler of disinformation through X.”
The hardline message is particularly pertinent coming from Miliband, who oversees the U.K.’s energy policy. Tesla Energy Ventures, a U.K. subsidiary of Musk’s tech giant, is currently bidding for a license to become an electricity supplier to homes and businesses in Britain, setting itself up as a rival to home-grown incumbents like British Gas and Octopus Energy.
Miliband has faced calls from the centrist Liberal Democrat party and from some of Labour’s own MPs to block the license.
However, asked by POLITICO on Sunday whether Musk’s company should be granted a licence, Miliband insisted it was a matter for the regulator, Ofgem, and had to “go through the proper process.”
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