British Prime Minister Keir Starmer responds to Elon Musk and the “poison of the extreme right”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer Reply to Elon Musk Monday after the world’s richest man repeatedly hurled a host of inflammatory accusations at the country’s leader over his government’s record in the long-running child grooming scandal.

Musk The UK leader has been accused of being “complicit in the rape of Britain” on his

For just the past 48 hours, Musk has called for Starmer to be jailed and posted a poll to his followers asking whether “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government.”

While the British leader did not mention Musk’s name directly, he widely condemned what he said was the spread of false information.

“Those who spread lies and misinformation as widely as possible don’t care about the victims. They care about themselves,” Starmer told a news conference on Monday.

Musk’s harsh criticism points to a years-long scandal in Britain over the state’s response to child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs, made up mostly of Pakistani men, who targeted vulnerable young girls in multiple towns across northern England.

A 2014 government-commissioned report concluded that around 1,400 vulnerable children were targeted and sexually abused in the town of Rotherham – the largest identified case of child grooming in the country – between 1997 and 2013. The report details how children as young as 11 were subjected to Trafficking, rape and other forms of physical abuse.

This report strongly criticized the “collective failures of political and policing leadership” and said that “mounting evidence that child sexual exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham” was ignored and even suppressed by the authorities.

Starmer served as Director of Public Prosecutions between 2008 and 2013, a role that effectively made him the country’s top prosecutor when the child grooming scandals emerged.

On Monday, Starmer strongly defended his judicial record.

“I brought the first major prosecution of an Asian grooming ring in this particular case… It was the first of its kind. We changed, or I changed, the whole approach to prosecution, because I wanted to challenge the myths and legends, and I did challenge them.” The Prime Minister said that stereotypes prevent these victims from being heard.

Starmer added: “When I left office, we had the highest number of child sexual abuse cases ever prosecuted.”

A 2013 British parliamentary report praised Starmer’s handling of child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs.

The report said: “Mr Starmer has strived to improve the treatment of victims of sexual assault within the criminal justice system throughout his time as DPP…and his response should provide a model for other agencies involved in tackling domestic grooming.” .

Starmer, who took office after Labour’s landslide election victory last summer, has so far remained resistant to pressure from critics to launch a new national review into such historic child sexual abuse, saying too many reviews at national and local level have already been carried out. In this regard.

In response to those comments from this morning, Musk posted on X that the “real reason” Starmer won’t hold a national review is that it “would show how Starmer has repeatedly ignored the pleas of large numbers of young girls and their parents, in order to secure political support.”

Musk, a key adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, has been locked in a dispute with Starmer’s centre-left Labor government ever since. Far-right rioters Chaos across the UK last summer.

Musk at the time described Britain as a “police state” after Starmer’s government aggressively prosecuted those involved in the riots.

Over the past week, Musk has also called for the release of far-right activist Tommy Robinson, a central figure in shaping last summer’s violence.

Robinson – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – is a long-time far-right agitator who led the English Defense League, a group that British police authorities have linked to the original violent protest that sparked riots across the country in August.

Robinson is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court.

The public spat with the British government is just the latest in a series of Musk’s interventions in the domestic politics of key US allies in Europe.

In an editorial for the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag published last month, Musk has publicly supported the far rightanti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party In the country’s next elections next February.

“The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is the last spark of hope for this country,” Musk wrote in his translated caption.

European leaders have publicly criticized the tech billionaire’s interference and publicly expressed concern about Musk’s influence given his ownership of the X platform.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that Musk was directly interfering in German affairs.

Macron said in a speech: “Ten years ago, who would have imagined it if we had been told that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would support a new international reactionary movement and directly interfere in the elections, including in Germany.” Wide-ranging foreign policy discourse.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Jahr Stoer said on Monday that Musk’s influence was worrying.

“I find it disturbing that a man with huge access to social media and huge economic resources would directly involve himself in the internal affairs of other countries,” Stoer told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, according to what was reported by Reuters news agency.

“This is not the way things should be between democracies and allies,” Storr reportedly said.

Joan Stoker

She contributed to this report.