How Elon Musk has meddled in European affairs
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From bashing Keir Starmer to promoting the AfD, the X owner is not shy about intervening. A limited – at best – understanding of the continent of Europe and its component countries has not prevented the world’s richest man from intervening in the domestic politics of several of them, as well as attacking the EU itself.
Here we take a brief look at some of the occasions on which X owner Elon Musk has used his position as proprietor of one of the world’s largest social media platforms to meddle in the internal affairs of sovereign democratic states outside the US. An apparently flourishing relationship with Keir Starmer’s star-struck predecessor Rishi Sunak rapidly descended into something else altogether after the Labour leader became prime minister, triggered by the UK’s far-right summer riots.
Musk has variously claimed Britain was a “tyrannical police state”, called Starmer “two-tier Keir” over allegations of judicial discrimination against rightwingers, and described new farm inheritance tax rules as the UK “going full Stalin”.
He has asked King Charles to dissolve parliament and claimed Starmer should be in jail for his alleged part in the grooming gangs scandal, calling the prime minister “utterly despicable” and “deeply complicit in mass rapes in exchange for votes”.
Musk’s increasingly erratic remarks have also taken aim at the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, and even the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, who he said “doesn’t have what it takes” – apparently because of his refusal to laud far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
