Majority of public says Elon Musk having a negative impact on British politics, poll finds
Half the public think Elon Musk is having a negative impact on British politics following his rants on X about Labour and Sir Keir Starmer, according to a new survey.
The South African-born billionaire has spent much of the past week attacking the prime minister over his opposition to another national inquiry into grooming gangs.
And he also asked his 212 million followers whether America should “liberate” the UK from its “tyrannical government”.
A poll published on Saturday suggested widespread opposition to Musk‘s involvement in British politics.
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Some 53% of people told Opinium they thought he was having a negative impact on politics, compared to just 12% who thought he was having a positive one.
On his comments about grooming gangs specifically, 47% said they thought Mr Musk was being “unhelpful”, compared to 26% who thought the opposite.
Adam Drummond, head of political and social research at Opinium, said a “lack of enthusiasm about a foreign billionaire involving himself in British politics” was “one area of agreement” among the public.
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In other posts, he expressed support for Reform UK, but called for its leader Nigel Farage to step aside.
When asked about this, 71% of Reform UK voters said the Clacton MP was the best leader they could have now.
Earlier this week, Mr Farage insisted he could repair relations with the Tesla chief executive and incoming adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump.
But he also said Musk’s support was not “crucial” and it was more important to maintain his long-standing opposition to jailed far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
The split between Mr Farage and Musk came after the billionaire expressed strong support for Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
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Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has told Sky News that councils that believe they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs are “idiots” – as she denied Elon Musk influenced the decision to have a national inquiry on the subject.Â
The minister said: “I don’t follow Elon Musk’s advice on anything although maybe I too would like to go to Mars.
“Before anyone even knew Elon Musk’s name, I was working with the victims of these crimes.”
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Elon Musk. Pic: Reuters
Mr Musk had called Ms Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” in one of a series of inflammatory posts on X in January and said she should go to jail.
Mr Musk, then a close aide of US President Donald Trump, sparked a significant political row with his comments – with the Conservative Party and Reform UK calling for a new public inquiry into grooming gangs.
At the time, Ms Phillips denied a request for a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham on the basis that it should be done at a local level.
But the government announced a national inquiry after Baroness Casey’s rapid audit on grooming gangs, which was published in June.
Asked if she thought there was, in the words of Baroness Casey, “over representation” among suspects of Asian and Pakistani men, Ms Phillips replied: “My own experience of working with many young girls in my area – yes there is a problem. There are different parts of the country where the problem will look different, organised crime has different flavours across the board.
“But I have to look at the evidence… and the government reacts to the evidence.”
Ms Phillips also said the home secretary has written to all police chiefs telling them that data collection on ethnicity “has to change”, to ensure that it is always recorded, promising “we will legislate to change the way this [collection] is done if necessary”.
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Operation Beaconport has since been established, led by the National Crime Agency (NCA), and will be reviewing more than 1,200 closed cases of child sexual exploitation.
Ms Phillips revealed that at least “five, six” councils have asked to be a part of the national review – and denounced councils that believed they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs as “idiots”.
“I don’t want [the inquiry] just to go over places that have already had inquiries and find things the Casey had already identified,” she said.
She confirmed that a shortlist for a chair has been drawn up, and she expects the inquiry to be finished within three years.
Ms Phillips’s comments come after she announced £426,000 of funding to roll out artificial intelligence tools across all 43 police forces in England and Wales to speed up investigations into modern slavery, child sex abuse and county lines gangs.
Some 13 forces have access to the AI apps, which the Home Office says have saved more than £20m and 16,000 hours for investigators.
The apps can translate large amounts of text in foreign languages and analyse data to find relationships between suspects.
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