European leaders have rounded on Elon Musk for attempting to influence overseas politics, with President Macron of France suggesting that the world’s richest man was attempting to “intervene directly in elections”.
Sir Keir Starmer issued a thinly veiled swipe at the tech billionaire in which he criticised “lies and misinformation” over child sexual exploitation which had spread over social media in recent days. His comments followed those by Macron and Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor.
The prime minister said on Monday that a “line has been crossed” after Musk attacked Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, in online posts.
Devon and Cornwall police confirmed that a man had been charged with sending malicious communications to Phillips as recently as this month, after Musk’s criticism of her began. Jack Bennett, from Devon, was charged with sending malicious communications between April 2024 and January 2025 to three people, including the Labour minister.
Musk began his tirade against Phillips after a letter to Oldham council rejecting a request for a government inquiry into child grooming gangs in favour of a locally led inquiry, was revealed.
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He has been increasingly outspoken about British politics since the election and has targeted Starmer in his posts. Many of Musk’s social media tirades have focused on previous child grooming scandals and questioned whether the prime minister bears any responsibility for them as a former director of public prosecutions.
Musk said Phillips “deserves to be in prison” and branded her a “rape genocide apologist”.
The Conservatives rounded on Starmer after he said that those calling for a national inquiry into grooming gangs were seeking to “jump on a bandwagon of the far right”. Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, accused Starmer of “smear tactics”, saying that the abuse suffered by the victims should prompt “soul-searching not ranting”.
The prime minister is not expected to respond to Musk further, while No 10 played down suggestions that the row represented a more serious rift with the incoming US administration.
Starmer’s spokesman said that the prime minister already had a constructive relationship with Donald Trump and looked forward to working with him and his whole team.
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Downing Street said that although Starmer’s intervention followed criticism from other European leaders in the past 24 hours, it was not co-ordinated. Macron did not name Musk but left little doubt to whom he was referring when he said: “Ten years ago, if anyone had said that the owner of one of the world’s largest social networks would support a new reactionary alliance and intervene directly in elections, even in Germany, who would have imagined it?”
In Norway, Jonas Gahr Store, the prime minister, said he was concerned by Musk’s interventions before elections due in September. “I find it worrying that a man with enormous access to social media and huge economic resources involves himself so directly in the internal affairs of other countries,” he told NRK, the public broadcaster.
A spokesman for Scholz said Musk, who has endorsed the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in upcoming elections, would fail to influence voters. “We act as if Mr Musk’s statements on Twitter could influence a country of 84 million people with untruths or half-truths or expressions of opinion,” he said. “This is simply not the case.”
Musk continued his criticism on his social media platform X on Monday. He claimed any attempts to downplay responses to grooming scandals as being confined to the far-right was “an insane thing to say”.
He also accused Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, of having “committed an unforgivable crime against the British people” over his handling of grooming gangs while in office. A spokesman for Brown said there was “no basis for such allegations at all”.
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On Monday Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, told the Commons that a new victims and survivors panel would work on an “ongoing basis” to tackle child sexual exploitation and abuse. Grooming will also be made an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences.
• What is the grooming gangs scandal and how does Starmer fit in?
Starmer had been understood to want to avoid directly criticising Musk, who is a close ally of Donald Trump. But in a strongly worded riposte he said: “Those who are cheerleading Tommy Robinson aren’t interested in justice, they’re supporting a man who went to prison for nearly collapsing a grooming case, a gang grooming case.
“Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims, they’re interested in themselves.”
