When the Prime Minister has to tell the House of Commons he won’t be calling a general election despite an Elon Musk-backed petition demanding he do just that, it may feel like we’re living in an episode of Black Mirror.
But this week that’s what Sir Keir Starmer had to do after the Tesla founder and ardent supporter of Donald Trump boosted the poll to his 206 million followers on X, the social media platform he owns.
When the petition topped two million votes, Musk said “Wow” on X, the latest in a series of unlikely interventions in British politics that has left Downing Street struggling to respond.
Push back too far and you risk offending Musk, whose money helped elect Trump to the US presidency and has barely left his side since his victory in the election earlier this month.
Do nothing and you risk looking spineless in the face of what one expert told i was essentially trolling of the British Government.
Musk had already attacked the Prime Minister over the summer when he dubbed him “two-tier Keir” for clamping down on the far-right protests against Muslims and immigrants.
The apparent theory was that liberal protesters were allowed to protest while those on the right were arrested, ignoring the fact that some were setting fire to hotels housing migrants and putting people’s lives in danger.
Earlier this week Musk said that Britain is a “tyrannical police state” and shared a post from far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who is serving 18 months in jail for contempt of court, and wrote: “Why is he in prison for 18 months?”
Part of Musk’s interest in the UK comes from the fact that the issues he comments on are a close fit for Trump’s right-wing Maga agenda, and Starmer’s Government is on the left.
According to Andrew Chadwick, a professor of political communication at Loughborough University, Musk has an “ideological mission” and the way he is using X is a sign we are far removed from the time of tech owners being benevolent figures who facilitated a global conversation.
“That era when it comes to X is well and truly over because of how Musk has restructured the platform by incentivising users via the ad revenue scheme,” he said.
“He has started to see X as a platform for deliberate intervention in elections and politics, not just in the US but across Europe and in particular in Britain.”
Rich Hanley, associate professor emeritus of journalism at Quinnipiac University, told i that Musk was commenting on issues in the UK because his “ambitions go well beyond the United States”.
He said: “He’s not going to stop with the UK, he’s going to go in to Germany and other countries to expand his influence.
“He’s an opportunist, he wants to become the global mover and shaker and wants to influence events beyond that of someone with lesser wealth.”
Britain makes a good target because Musk sees a “moment of chaos and is seeking to exploit it”. Professor Hanley said: “He knows where the right is going and sees evidence that he can exploit that. That’s the opportunist in him.”
Musk’s fixation on Britain may also be partly due to a familial connection.
In 2013 he wrote online that he “always admired Margaret Thatcher”, adding that she was “tough, but sensible and fair, much like my English Nana”.
Musk added that under Thatcher, Britain went from “dreary to Great again”.
The “English Nana” Musk referred to was Liverpool-born Cora Robinson who went on to marry his grandfather Walter Musk, who was from South Africa, where Musk grew up.
Musk counts Talulah Riley, the British actress, as one of his two ex-wives and the two were married twice, with the second divorce coming in 2016.
The pair remained in touch and court documents made public during Musk’s battle to takeover Twitter in 2022 showed her texting him to “buy Twitter and delete it” because “America is going insane”.
In a portentous answer, Musk replied: “Maybe buy it and change it to properly support free speech.”
Another reason behind Musk’s attacks on Britain may be less obvious but have more potential impact on him: state regulation of social media.
The UK’s Online Safety Act is seen as one of the world’s toughest when it comes to hate speech, and after Musk’s comments about the far-right riots, media regulator Ofcom warned of an “increased risk” of sites like X being used to “provoke violence”.
After the riots over the summer, and Musk’s intervention in them, Labour has pledged to toughen up the Online Safety Act, potentially putting X in its crosshairs.
A sign of one potential outcome came from Brazil where the supreme court temporarily blocked X for spreading misinformation, then reinstated the platform after Musk agreed to make changes and paid a £3.7m fine.
Professor Chadwick said that Musk could be “testing the waters and seeing the limit” in the UK to see if Labour responded in a similar fashion.
He said: “The big question moving forward is whether the Online Safety Act is going to be strengthened in a way that harms Elon Musk’s interests and makes it hard to operate the platform?
“In that regard he’s probably likely to keep plugging away to undermine and make fun of the whole situation and troll the UK.
“The Government is in a really, really difficult position.
“What can you do as a government unless you want to start proscribing speech by banning the platform?”