Keir Starmer has launched into a war of words with Tech billionaire Elon Musk after the X and Tesla owner weighed in on the riots seen in Britain over the past week.
Yesterday Mr Musk responded to a video of fireworks being launched by far-right protestors, captioned by the original poster as “total madness”.
Responding to an account that described the riots as “the effects of mass migration and open borders”, Mr Musk claimed: “Civil war is inevitable.”
Amid widespread criticism of what many users of his platform said was a highly irresponsible comment, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has now also condemned Mr Musk’s intervention.
Speaking to journalists this lunchtime, Sir Keir’s official spokesman said there is “no justification” for such comments.
He added: “There’s no justification for comments like that and what we’ve seen in this country is organised illegal thuggery which has no place on our streets or online”.
“We’re talking about a minority of thugs that do not speak for Britain and in response to it we’ve seen some of the best of our communities coming out to clean up the mess and disruption.
“You can tell from that the prime minister doesn’t share those sentiments.”
The open attack on the X owner is a marked contrast to his friendly relationship with Sir Keir’s predecessor.
In 2023, Rishi Sunak interviewed Mr Musk at Downing Street amid a new Government focus on supporting AI innovation.
Sir Keir and his ministers have made a point of warning tech giants that any content hosted on their platforms promoting riots, abuse, or illegality must be dealt with.
Yesterday, Home Office minister Diana Johnson confirmed that the Secretary of State for Technology, Peter Kyle, is rapidly liaising with social media firms in order to limit the spread of disinformation, and investigate the potential involvement in its spread by hostile foreign actors.
On Friday the Prime Minister issued a major warning to social media giants, telling them that violent disorder is being “clearly whipped up online”, which is a criminal offence in Britain.
He lambasted Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and others: “It’s happening on your premises, and the law must be upheld everywhere”.
“That is the single most important duty of government, service rests on security. We will take all necessary action to keep our streets safe.”
It is understood that the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) contacted the major social media platforms as soon as they became aware of extremist content and disinformation circulating on their platforms, to ensure they were taking action in line with their terms of service and engaging with law enforcement.
As well as taking down content that is in breach of rules, DSIT is also using Twitter/X’s recent feature of ‘community notes’ – where other users are able to add factual clarifications to incorrect posts – to combat misinformation.