Elon Musk appears to have many obsessions. The world’s richest man is evangelical about electric vehicles, space travel and Donald Trump. Another of his interests may yet have profound consequences for the UK: British politics.
The billionaire is reported to be thinking of becoming the biggest donor in history with a rumoured £80m payment to Nigel’s Farage’s Reform UK party.
Like so many who embraced Trump’s bellicose brand of rightwing populism, Musk was radicalised by his frustration at lockdowns, according to Musk watchers.
Irritated at the way manufacturing was hit at his Tesla car plants, he started spending more time online, going on to test the boundaries of rules on misinformation laid out by Twitter, as it was then known.
Now, having helped to propel Trump into the White House, he is reportedly turning his interest to Britain.
Sources in Reform say they are unaware of Musk’s spending plans, while he has also denied it. But if the Tesla and X owner backs up his online criticism of Keir Starmer’s government with a mega-donation to Labour’s opponents, it could prove one of the most consequential political acts of this parliament.
Within two years of his October 2022 purchase of X, formerly Twitter, Musk had already become a darling of the international far right, who were grateful for his restoration of previously suspended accounts under the banner of free speech. But Musk then went further, using his own account to amplify the message of the far-right activist and convicted criminal Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson.
By the time of this year’s rioting in English cities, Musk was engaged in a full-blown onslaught against the Labour government, claiming “civil war is inevitable” and describing the prime minister as “two-tier Keir” in an echo of a position that police were treating white far-right “protesters” more harshly than minority groups.
Last weekend, however, came a suggestion that Musk could swap words for deeds in relation to Britain when the Sunday Times reported that he could be about to make a £80m donation to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party and believed the MP would be the next UK prime minister.
Musk denied the claim on Thursday, but Reform UK had been conspicuously quiet about it, while Farage boasted last month that he was expecting to count on help from his “new friend Elon” in the next general election. A major donor to his party was even quite bullish, telling the Guardian this week: “Watch this space.”
Musk’s fortune has risen by $133bn (£104.4bn) so far this year and stands at $362bn, coming from a shareholding in Tesla of approximately 13% and his ownership of a number of companies.
The reasons behind Musk’s apparent animosity towards Starmer – and interest in the UK – may be more complicated.
The range of theories for why the UK finds itself in Musk’s crosshairs includes the notion that he has come to view Britain as the centre of what he has described as the “woke mind virus”, which he blames for the gender transition of his estranged daughter.
A more exotic theory – partly based on the times when Musk has been active on X – is that his tweeting in response to breaking news in the UK is the result of a tendency to stay up late at night in the US.
“I think I should not tweet after 3am,” Musk told the BBC last year.
However, one of the most obvious explanations relates to the clear clash between Musk’s own libertarian, ultra-free speech vision of X being a true “town square” of the internet and Labour’s mission to clamp down on online hate speech.
Musk was “accountable to no one”, complained Peter Kyle, the science and technology secretary and the man directly responsible for British government engagement with social media companies, in August. What also may have irked Musk is the role of Labour figures including Morgan McSweeney, now Starmer’s chief of staff, in founding the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a critic of Musk’s stripping away of what had been Twitter’s guard rails on hate speech. In October, Musk had issued a declaration of “war” on the CCDH, which he described as a “criminal organisation” that he would “go after”.
However, there is no indication that holding Musk to account will halt a foray into rightwing politics in the UK. Beyond a near-relentless torrent of tweets, just how Musk could amplify his footprint in British public life is more opaque.
Musk could get around strict regulations on overseas donations either by giving money through the UK arm of X or by securing UK citizenship, which his father, Errol, has said he is eligible for because his grandmother was British.
Musk may also be tempted to wade further into the debate with British industry and to engage further with Starmer’s government.
Musk’s last high-profile engagement in the UK was in November last year, when he attended the inaugural AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, home of the Enigma code breakers. Those who encountered Musk at the Bletchley summit said he was polite, chatty and surrounded by a surprisingly minimal entourage, seemingly handling a lot of the official emails about the event himself.
This has convinced one former government adviser that discussing AI policy is probably the best way Labour could build a serviceable relationship with Musk. The tech tycoon, who has established his own AI firm, xAI, has consistently warned about the dangers of unchecked development of the technology. Speaking at the summit, he said: “There is some chance, above zero, that AI will kill us all.”
The former adviser said the establishment of the UK’s AI Safety Institute, by Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, a world first at the time, could carry some weight with Musk.
“He cares about AI safety and has done for years. Having a grown-up conversation with him about the UK’s world-leading work on the national security risks from AI feels like a good place to start,” said the former adviser, adding that Rishi Sunak would be a good emissary even if Starmer found that politically unpalatable. “Musk doesn’t suffer fools and Sunak really knows his stuff on AI.”
Another option would be to send Kyle, who has impressed with his grasp of his brief, and the national security adviser, Jonathan Powell. “It would show seriousness,” said the former adviser.
An indication of the current government’s wariness of Musk can be gauged by the extent to which correspondence between Musk’s office and the Cabinet Office about the Bletchley Park summit was so heavily redacted when released this week to the Guardian after a freedom of information request.
It included an email from “the office of Mr Musk” to No 10 in November last year in which Sunak was informed that Musk would not be attending day two of the summit “due to critical matters”. At the time, Musk’s non-appearance had been spun as planned, since it was about heads of government instead.
“That’s a shame. But of course we understand,” No 10 told Musk, the emails show.
Musk could still build a bridgehead to Starmer’s government outside his provocative social media posts. X is now advertising for a regulatory legal counsel in London or Dublin, as well as a “senior associate, government affairs” to be based at its European headquarters in Dublin who would “identify opportunities for X to defend freedom of expression”.
The nightmare for Starmer is that Musk may heavily back Farage and bring his considerable resources to bear, even without giving tens of millions of pounds.
A former Twitter employee in London who was at the company when Musk took over said: “At the back end of Twitter there were always ways to ensure people – we called them VITs [very important Tweeters] – could get amplified, though you would never do it. But I noticed not long after he fired lots of people that he had that amplification tag put on his own name, so whether you followed him or not he was appearing in everyone’s feed.
“That’s something he could choose to do for anyone else, whether it’s an election in the US or the UK, whether it’s trying to influence people’s perceptions of, say, Keir Starmer, or boost someone like Nigel Farage.
“I think Twitter and now X is like a crack addiction for him, though. He is clearly chasing a particular hit all the time and he has ended up self-radicalising himself with the platform he has purchased.”
That platform has already had a tangible impact on the fortunes of Britain’s extreme right, which had been struggling to reach large audiences after it was de-platformed by major social media companies.
His takeover of Twitter changed that, according to Joe Mulhall, the director of research at Hope Not Hate, who notes that Yaxley-Lennon explicitly thanked Musk during a demonstration in July.
He said: “A number of the most high-profile figures spreading disinformation during this year’s riots were given their accounts back on X because of Musk’s amnesty. Musk’s decision to platform, engage with and amplify extreme figures in the UK is having a tangible effect on our politics and on our streets.”
Musk has been approached for comment.