Musk turned on the British politician Farage because of the imprisoned extreme right-wing activist Politics News
Elon Musk has withdrawn his support for Nigel Farage, leader of Britain’s populist Reform UK party, after falling out over the tech billionaire’s call for the jailed right-wing activist to be released.
Musk said on Sunday that UK reformists should change their leader after Farage distanced himself from anti-Islam campaigner Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson.
“The reformist party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes,” Musk posted on his X social network.
Musk falsely claimed last week that Yaxley-Lennon, who is serving an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court, was jailed for “telling the truth” about the child grooming scandal that rocked the UK in the 2010s.
Yaxley-Lennon was sentenced after he admitted breaching a ban on repeating false allegations about the Syrian refugee to a schoolboy who successfully sued him for defamation.
Asked about Musk’s support for Yaxley-Lennon on Friday, Farage said the activist had been jailed for contempt of court, not for speaking out publicly against groom gangs.
“We are a political party whose goal is to win the next general election. [Yaxley-Lennon] it’s not what we need,” Farage told GB News.
Musk’s attack on Farage comes days after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO publicly backed Reform UK, which Farage founded in 2018 as a pro-Brexit party, saying it was the only party that could “save Britain”.
Farage told the BBC last month that Reform UK was in “open negotiations” with Musk about his donation to the party.
Responding to Musk on Sunday, Farage said the billionaire’s comments were a “surprise” but he would not change his stance.
“Well, this is a surprise! Elon is a remarkable person, but I’m afraid I don’t agree with this,” he said on X.
“My position remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I never betray my principles.”
Musk, who has been repeatedly ranked as the richest man in the world, has been increasingly meddling in politics in different countries since he endorsed US President-elect Donald Trump during his re-election campaign.
He claimed on Thursday that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer had failed to bring groom gangs to justice while he was director of public prosecutions and should face “charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in British history”.
British Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Musk’s views on the issue were “misjudged and certainly misinformed”.
A 2014 investigation found that at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham, northern England, between 1997 and 2013.
A report by academic Alexis Jay found authorities in the city had repeatedly failed to act on allegations of abuse, with some council staff expressing “nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being seen as racist”.
The perpetrators in the Rotherham case overwhelmingly described their victims as South Asian, although a 2020 study commissioned by the Home Office found that the majority of perpetrators in gang child sexual exploitation cases were white.
Musk, who is expected to co-head the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in the incoming Trump administration, last month backed the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, which German security services have classified as a suspected extremist organization.
