Nick Cohen on Elon Musk’s move to overthrow the UK government:

A billionaire American with extreme right-wing politics and a distant relationship to the truth wants to impose his will on us, and has found many eager collaborators here in the UK to help him do it.

The Financial Times reported three days ago: “Elon Musk has privately discussed with allies how Sir Keir Starmer could be removed as UK prime minister before the next general election.”

His “allies”? What are they? France, Germany, Sweden? Russia, China, North Korea? Does he think he’s a country?

And who might those allies be? The Mail reports this morning that the government believes Dominic Cummings, who orchestrated the “leave” victory in the 2016 Brexit referendum, “has encouraged Mr Musk’s incendiary social media posts calling for Sir Keir to be removed from office and even imprisoned amid criticism of the Prime Minister’s record on the grooming gangs scandal.”

How does Elon Musk think he has the right to do any of this?

Let us be clear: no inquiry will satisfy Musk and his friends. As Andrew Norfolk, the great Times reporter, who more than a decade ago revealed the widespread abuse of young white girls by predominantly Asian men in Rochdale, said a few days ago, “the truth is a concept that Elon Musk clearly has very little interest in.”

Norfolk continued that, far from being a villain, Keir Starmer did everything he could to tackle the abusers.

“I want to put the record straight on this. It was Starmer who changed the rules to make more prosecutions possible. That happened and there was a huge increase in convictions.”

…

For the UK government, the most staggering aspect of Musk’s power is that he is a member of the incoming administration of what was once our closest ally.

The UK has never experienced anything like this. Tied to the US through security and intelligence alliances, we now face a member of the Trump team spreading lies about our prime minister while threatening to incite racial violence on our streets.

Bad times today.

H/t Tim Harris