With allies
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
The xenophobic right wingers have long made a bogeyman out of “the left,” saying that they are conspiring to impose a One World Government on everyone. That’s why they hate the UN, among other things. Little did they know that siding with Big Money oligarchs would be a far easier path to world totalitarianism.
And here’s that lovely X again:
“Elon Musk accuses entire Labour Party of being “guilty” of participating in grooming gangs because a former MP who last served in 2005 was recently arrested on sex-crime charges, which would be a lot like saying
the GOP is the party of pedophiles because of Dennis Hastert
Elon Musk v
X
@elonmusk • Jan 11 Now we know why Labour voted against an inquiry: they are guilty
x.com/inevitablewest…”
Coel, do you think this is responsible tweeting? Could you provide a defence of this? Perhaps with further explanations of why we should read every one of Musk’s tweets + everything he has said over the years to whoever he happens to have spoken to, in order to understand this tweet? That would be helpful. The reason why the government is refusing to do another inquiry is that it will go on for years and it will mean that the recommendations of the last inquiry (which the Tories did not bother to implement) cannot be implemented – if at all – until the next inquiry, which will not only take years but will cost millions of pounds, is finished? I honestly do not understand why you leap tp Musk’s defence in the ridiculous ways you do, Could you explain why you feel constrained to do this? Are you not being, like Musk, “rather obsessive”?
He has silly money, which is enough to convince a narcissist he is the best at everything. Sycophants like Coel don’t help, either.