Another day, another story that risks further exacerbating tensions between the world’s richest man and the prime minister. The Mirror reports that Elon Musk’s posts on X (the platform he owns) are being monitored by the Home Office’s counter-extremism unit as part of an increased effort to assess the risk posed to Britain by tweets sent from those with large followings. The news will go down like a cup of cold sick with Musk who has long railed against the UK government over censorship. It’s just another indicator of how the strained relationship between Keir Starmer and Musk is unlikely to improve anytime soon. But are things so bad that Musk will try to force Starmer out of No. 10 ahead of the next election?
Musk is doing plenty to make life harder for Starmer
This is the claim in the Financial Times which reports that Musk has ‘privately discussed with allies how Sir Keir Starmer could be removed as UK prime minister before the next general election’. The paper quotes an ally of Musk explaining his rationale: ‘His view is that western civilisation itself is threatened’. As I write in this week’s politics column, Musk may be dabbling in politics across the continent (last night he hosted an ‘in conversation’ with the leader of Germany’s AfD party) but he has a particular focus on the UK. Musk – whose grandmother was British – sees the UK as the Athens to America’s Rome. What’s more, the idea that Musk would like Starmer out isn’t really a secret: he tweets sentiments to this effect on a regular basis. Just this week, he called on Starmer to resign, said there should be an early election and even ran a poll on whether ‘America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government’ (The answer? Yes: 58 per cent. No: 42 per cent). So it has been clear for some time that Musk would like Starmer out of No. 10 as soon as possible.
But does he have the power to make it happen? One route to destabilising the current government would be to fund a rival party. So it’s no coincidence that Musk has been mulling a big money donation to the Reform party with Nigel Farage and his new Reform treasurer Nick Candy visiting the tech billionaire at Mar-A-Lago just before Christmas. However, this seems uncertain after Musk turned on Farage last weekend, suggesting the Reform leader did not have what it takes to lead his party after Farage distanced his party from Tommy Robinson, the jailed activist. A donation to Reform could still happen, with Reform party sources keen to downplay the scale of the fallout (Farage will soon be back in Trump world for the inauguration on 20 January). Musk could also look to fund the Conservative party; it’s not gone unnoticed that he has been tweeting more approvingly of Tory leader Kemi Badenoch this week. Or he could even look for an entirely new party: Dominic Cummings, for example, has been talking about forming ‘the start-up party’ for some time to reset British politics.
In the meantime, Musk is doing plenty through his platform to make life harder for Starmer, as the focus on grooming gangs this week shows. The issue returned to the top of the news agenda as a direct result of Musk’s tweets and Starmer’s initial response to rule out a new government inquiry may not hold. Even some of his own side – such as the Labour metro mayor Andy Burnham – are backing calls for a limited inquiry into grooming gangs. It’s unlikely to be the last issue in UK politics that Musk gets involved in. What’s more, Musk is significant enough in his own right – through his business career, wealth and X ownership – that even if he eventually falls out with Donald Trump (as many in Labour secretly hope), he’ll still be hard to ignore or dismiss. It means that while Musk may fall short in any plan to oust Starmer prematurely, he can certainly make his time in office much harder.
Listen to more analysis from Katy Balls on Coffee House Shots, The Spectator’s daily politics podcast:
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