A close ally of Elon Musk has said he’s going to try and convince the tech mogul to simmer down, amid a frenzied X-posting marathon that has seen him call for political revolution in the United Kingdom.
Scottish historian Niall Ferguson is uniquely placed to comment on Musk’s ramblings: He splits his time between the U.K and the U.S. (he has positions at both Harvard and Stanford), and he has been friends with the X commander-in-chief for over a decade.
And despite the 60-year-old openly fawning over Musk’s “genius,” he reckons the billionaire should keep his nose out of British politics.
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Musk has spent much of the last 24 hours or so attacking British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other figures from his ruling left-wing Labour Party. He called for the imprisonment of Jess Phillips, the party’s safeguarding minister, over her so-called refusal to launch an investigation into alleged child exploitation between 2011 and 2014 in Oldham, Greater Manchester, in the northwest of England.
Musk even called for King Charles to dissolve Parliament and have a general election. (Britain’s monarch has the “prerogative power” to do so, usually following guidance from the prime minister. The dissolution of a Parliament triggers a new general election.)
The billionaire highlighted a reply-bait post asking whether the king “should dissolve parliament and order a General Election… for the sake and security” of Britain, retweeting it with a one-word comment: “Yes.”
The X rampage—where he also called for the release of a jailed controversial right-wing figurehead—is part of a wider effort on Musk’s part to show his support for Nigel Farage and his Reform party.
The party, which models itself as a more moderate version of the far right-wing in the U.K., seeks to break the stranglehold the Labour Party and the Conservatives have on British politics. And Musk’s efforts have left those in the MAGAverse and on the U.K. right with their tongues wagging. However, Ferguson reckons it’s a bridge too far.
“Someone who’s not a British citizen should not be playing a disproportionate part in British politics, directly or indirectly,” he told The Times, referring to reports that Musk could write a large check for Reform. Farage claims that the pair spoke “about money” during a meal at President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last month. Reports put the figure as high as $100 million.
But even Farage has distanced himself from Tommy Robinson, the jailed far-right activist whom Musk has attempted to lionize.
Musk retweeted posts describing Robinson as a “political prisoner” and said himself: “Britain needs Reform now!”
In October, Robinson, who is widely regarded as a fascist thug in the U.K., was jailed for 18 months after admitting contempt of court by repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee. Robinson’s real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and he has committed a string of other crimes, including but not limited to traveling on another man’s passport to the U.S., mortgage fraud, possession of drugs, threatening behavior and breach of a court order.
It is not Robinson, or Farage, but Kemi Badenoch—the fresh and young leader of the Conservatives—that is the real deal, Ferguson says. “On this one he’s making an uncharacteristic mistake. When he gets to see what Kemi Badenoch is about, he’ll realize that Nigel Farage is last decade’s model. I will try and persuade Elon to rethink this,” he added.
The main focus of Musk’s ire is Sir Keir Starmer. He has accused the politician of failing to properly prosecute rape gangs while Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), which is the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in England and Wales. The DPP is in charge of conducting all criminal prosecutions initiated by the police.
Hours after Musk’s intervention, Badenoch demanded a national probe into the U.K.’s “rape gangs scandal”, arguing that “2025 must be the year that the victims start to get justice.”
But despite the heat Starmer is taking for batting away calls for an inquiry, the previous Conservative government actually turned down a similar request in 2022.
And British politicians from both sides of the spectrum are wary of Musk putting his oar into U.K. affairs.
In a radio interview Friday morning, the country’s Public Health Minister Andrew Gwynne, from the Labour Party, said that Musk “perhaps ought to focus on issues on the other side of the Atlantic.”
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."
Mark Shanahan, Associate Professor of Political Engagement at the University of Surrey in the south of England thinks Musk is disrupting simply because he can.
“Musk cares no more about the UK than he does about Lapland,” he told the Daily Beast. “He likes to play the disruptor and has bought a social media platform to enable him to do so. But much of the UK has switched off X and while his from-the-hip shots at the UK government may play well with the 14% of voters over here who voted for far-right parties in the summer’s general election, they have almost no cut-through with the rest of the population.”
