Musk’s War on Starmer: How the far right latched onto the grooming gangs scandal
Photo Courtesy of EPA Images via Free Malaysia Today
In an unfortunate continuation of 2024’s political tumult, Keir Starmer’s new year did not begin with the smooth government reset he had been hoping for. Instead of focusing attention on his efforts to reduce NHS waiting lists, the Prime Minister found himself at the center of yet another political firestorm, this time ignited by the world’s richest man.
Beginning with a post made on 31 December, Elon Musk came to dominate Britain’s political agenda with his calls for a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal. Given that the Labour government already refused such an inquiry in October, the newly installed leader of DOGE was placed on an inevitable collision course with Keir Starmer.
Disregarding arguments that a national inquiry into child sexual abuse has already been held, Musk lambasted both the Labour Leader and his Minister for Safeguarding, Jess Phillips, on his social media platform X. While the suggestion that the Prime Minister has been ‘complicit in the rape of Britain’ certainly made headlines, it was his singling out of Phillips as a ‘rape genocide apologist’ which threw the feud into the public eye. Phillips, who has dedicated her political career to tackling violence against women and girls, has since been open about the threats such comments have posed to her safety. Nonetheless, Musk continued to issue hundreds of posts attacking both Phillips and the government she represents.
Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch, who has been pulling her party rightward since her victory over Robert Jenrick, echoed Musk’s claims of a ‘cover-up’, lending her voice to calls for a national inquiry. The Conservative leader has since been criticised for not having met any victims, serving in a government which didn’t act on any of the recommendations of the Jay Inquiry, and having ‘never mentioned grooming gangs in the Commons in eight years as an MP’.
Whilst Starmer rebuffed Badenoch during a predictably bitter session of PMQs, he directly addressed the escalating attacks at a press conference in Surrey. Breaking from his typical approach of detached dismissal, Starmer offered an impassioned defence of Jess Phillips while labelling the ‘lies and disinformation’ circulated online as the ‘poison of the far right’. Although the Prime Minister’s reproach did not go unchallenged, it is undisputed that the issue of grooming gangs has long been at the fore of far-right rhetoric in the UK.
Referring to historic cases of organised child sexual abuse - most of which occurred towards the beginning of the 2000s in towns such as Rotherham, Oldham, and Telford - the grooming gangs scandal constitutes one of the darkest chapters in Britain’s social and political history. Victims were systematically failed by police, councils, and the prosecution service, the latter of which was led by Keir Starmer from 2008 - 2013.
While universally recognised as a heinous failure of the state, the scandal has consistently served as a focus of far-right ire, feeding into existing ideological narratives concerning immigration, freedom of speech, the flaws of liberal politics, and establishment corruption. The disputed role of Pakistani men as ringleaders of the abuse seems to have animated the issue among activists. Claims that local authorities refused to act for fear of upsetting community cohesion or being labelled ‘racist’ have similarly provoked those associated with the radical right.
The issue has most notably been incorporated into the messaging of Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), the founder of the English Defence League who is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for interfering in a grooming gangs case.
It is therefore unsurprising that Musk, and the global movement he has come to represent, would coalesce in opposition to Labour's decision. While his motives are far from clear, this fractious episode has since been interpreted as an assault on a socially liberal government defying the international tilt towards the far right. When placed alongside his proposal to ‘liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government’, and reports that Musk is actively seeking to oust a sitting Prime Minister, the significance of the grooming gangs furore is brought into even sharper focus.
The recent announcement of a national review of grooming gangs by the Home Secretary seems to represent some sort of concession to Musk, underscoring the troubling influence the tech billionaire holds in the UK political sphere. While this development has momentarily quelled the criticism of the government, Trump’s return to the White House is likely to only escalate such interference in British political life, leaving Starmer with the daunting prospect of further entanglements with his transatlantic critics.