Elon Musk’s moral crusade concerning U.K. rape gangs has taken a strange turn, as he appears to have offered his backing to a misogynist former kickboxer accused of sex trafficking who wants to be the country’s next Prime Minister.
The tech billionaire has recently become interested in British politics, most notably calling for King Charles III to dissolve parliament and hold a general election to replace the current Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. (This is absolutely impossible under the British political system.) Musk has expressed apprehension at the ruling Labour party leader’s failure to carry out an inquest into child grooming gangs across England, despite the fact that there has already been a national inquiry.
And now, he has taken to X to agree that Andrew Tate’s entry into British politics is the answer. Musk replied to a post that said what Tate is doing “will be studied for many years. Even if he doesn’t win and become Prime Minister, his involvement will transform British politics & create an army of men demanding change.”
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Tate, a controversial right-wing figure and self-proclaimed “misogynist” was once banned from Twitter for saying women should “bear responsibility” for being sexually assaulted. The ex-professional kick boxer was born in the U.S. and raised in the U.K. and he recently announced that he intends to run to be the next Prime Minister of the latter, asking his 10.5 million X followers in an “ultra serious post” if he should do so to save “Britan.”
And despite the spelling error and basic lack of understanding of British politics (you cannot simply run to be PM, you must first win local elections and become a member of parliament—and also head up the main political party) his post gained traction.
Musk appeared to offer support to the man who, alongside his brother, faces criminal allegations in Romania of rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women. After those legal proceedings are complete, the pair are set to be extradited to the U.K. where they face additional allegations of rape and human trafficking. They deny all charges.
Regardless of his alleged involvement in the very crime Musk has become so angry about, he endorsed the post that shared a video of Tate and his brother Tristan launching the “Bruv Party,” and complaining that the U.K. has suffered a major decline under current, and previous, leadership.
“The generational failure which the constituents of the U.K. have been forced to endure is legendarily terrible,” Tate barked in the clip.
In an X post Tuesday morning, Tate called himself the “unofficial Prime Minister of The United Kingdom” and said he “whole heartedly supports Greenlands annexation into the American empire [sic].”
Elon Musk sticking his oar into U.K. politics hasn’t gone down well on the other side of the Atlantic, especially after he called for far right criminal Tommy Robinson to be freed from prison, where he is holed up for repeating libelous slurs against a Syrian refugee.
The world’s richest man tweeted “Free Tommy Robinson” to his 210 million X followers earlier this month. Musk also said a controversial anti-establishment documentary by Robinson was “worth watching.”
Politicians in the U.K. have since spoken out against Musk’s backing of Robinson, who has a long criminal rap sheet. Alicia Kearns, who shadows Labour’s Jess Phillips as the Conservative spokesperson on safeguarding, told the BBC that Musk had “fallen prone” to sharing things on his X platform “without critically assessing them.”
She accused Musk of “drawing away attention from the survivors and from the victims” of rape gangs, and “lionising people like Tommy Robinson—which is frankly dangerous."
Musk’s apparent support for Tate and Robinson comes after he offered his support for Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
