Elon Musk has stepped up his attacks on the UK since the election of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government, branding the country “a police state”.
But he enjoys a warmer relationship with former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Tony Blair, who have both attempted to strengthen ties with the world’s richest man, now one of US president-elect Donald Trump’s closest advisers.
Johnson recently renewed an acquaintance with the Tesla chief, according to three people familiar with the matter, having been reintroduced by Sriram Krishnan, a London-based venture capitalist who helped Musk with his 2022 acquisition of Twitter.
Blair, who hailed the entrepreneur as “an extraordinary innovator” in a recent book, has met Musk and spoken with him on the phone, according to people familiar with their contacts.
They share an investor in Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who has backed both Tesla and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. TBI also works with Musk’s Starlink satellite network on projects in Malawi and Rwanda.
The souring of Musk’s attitude towards the UK dates from the aftermath of a mass stabbing of children in Southport in July when riots broke out across the country.
Dozens of people were arrested over social media posts and some of them jailed for offences including inciting racial hatred.
In response, Musk adopted the phrase “two-tier Keir”, contrasting the punishment of social media posters with the sentencing of other offenders.
When Starmer’s X account in August said, “We will not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities”, Musk responded: “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?”
Tensions were inflamed further when Musk was not invited to the UK’s Global Investment Summit in October. Musk responded by posting on X: “I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted paedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts.”
At the time, Starmer’s government had begun releasing certain prisoners early because of overcrowding, though sex offenders were excluded.
Musk’s grandstanding on UK politics follows interventions around the world, ranging from championing Argentina’s populist leader Javier Milei to castigating liberal leadership in countries such as Germany, Brazil and Australia.
But his diatribes against the UK have become especially frequent and outspoken and extended well beyond technology and free speech. He condemned Starmer’s move to levy inheritance tax on some farms as “going full Stalin”.
Starmer’s government, which has few connections to Musk, has been caught off-guard. Lord Peter Mandelson, the Labour peer, last week told UK leaders to “swallow your pride” and engage with the Tesla and X leader’s associates.
Mandelson’s advice included using Musk’s British “friends” to build relations, while describing Reform UK leader Nigel Farage as “a bridgehead”, both to Trump and to Musk.
Farage told the FT he was introduced to Musk by Trump ahead of the US election and the entrepreneur had “incredible knowledge” about the UK, “even on farmers and inheritance tax”.
He told a YouTube podcast, The Winston Marshall Show, that Musk had explained his interest in the UK by saying: “You are the mother country of the entirety of the English speaking world, it really matters.”
A year ago, Musk was lauded by then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as a “brilliant innovator”, while on stage together at London’s opulent Lancaster House as the closing act of the UK government’s global AI safety summit.
Sunak, a self-proclaimed “tech geek”, had texted Musk directly to invite him, only to be “ghosted” for several weeks, according to people briefed on the encounter.
Musk eventually responded, later pitching the idea of setting up an AI talent hub in Britain to the then prime minister, according to two people familiar with the discussions. People close to Sunak say the pair stayed in contact afterwards and Musk later described him on X as “an asset to the UK”.
He has also previously expressed warm words for another UK prime minister, mentioning family ties that may help explain his enduring UK interest: “Always admired Margaret Thatcher”, he wrote in 2013, “she was tough, but sensible & fair, much like my English Nana.”
During Johnson’s premiership, Musk struck up a relationship with the then prime minister’s maverick adviser Dominic Cummings, according to people briefed on the matter. An ally of Cummings said the pair formed a connection over shared views on “people, ideas and machines” rather than politics.
Some of the ideas underpinning Musk’s Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) — an advisory body he has been appointed to co-chair by president-elect Trump — echo those put forward by Cummings in 2020.
While Cummings advertised for people with “exceptional academic qualifications”, “weirdos and misfits” and people willing to do “exhausting but interesting” work, Musk is now looking to hire “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours a week on unglamorous cost-cutting”.
Cummings has posted on X mentioning Musk seven times in the last month, with several posts referring to how the liberal class underestimate his genius, and joining in his criticism of UK policy and free speech crusade.
The same cause has been taken up by Silicon Valley allies and fellow Trump supporters such as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who this week responded to a post stating that 3,300 Brits had been detained by UK police for “online trolling” — drawn from a 2017 Times article — with the caption: “They will greet us as liberators.”
Shaun Maguire, a partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, reposted a video made by far-right provocateur Tommy Robinson, saying: “Anyone who doubts the institutional decay and socialist moral rot taking hold of Western societies needs to watch this”.
“Why is he in prison for 18 months?” Musk wrote last weekend as he retweeted a post by Robinson’s account about his latest jail sentence. In October, Robinson was jailed for 18 months after admitting contempt of court by repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee.
The billionaire told an associate that he fears arrest himself if he travels to the UK, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation.
One person who has worked closely with Musk said he responded to “literally whatever the Twittersphere is feeding to him at that particular moment”, adding “there are a lot of British people on X and they speak the same language as him”.
“Musk has been radicalised by his own platform,” said a British tech lobbyist, referring to the algorithms on X that have been feeding him content about British politics. “I wouldn’t underestimate the extent to which the trolling is peacocking for the rightwing bros in the ‘manosphere’ he’s now in with.”
Others argue Musk’s antipathy can be traced to his business interests. The UK’s landmark Online Safety Act, due to come into full force next year, will require X and other social media groups to remove content that is deemed to incite violence or racial hatred.
“His British freedom of speech crusade is 100 per cent about retaliation to the perceived threat from regulators to X,” said the person who has worked closely with Musk. X is currently hiring for a regulatory legal counsel in London or Dublin.
Some UK policymakers express concerns about whether Musk will complicate Labour’s bid to build ties with the new US president, as well as efforts to strengthen tech regulation. “He’s far too important to ignore,” said a senior Labour figure of Musk. “We will have to work with him, at least until it all blows up between him and Trump.”
Farage sees things more positively. Asked whether Reform UK might expect help in the next UK election campaign, he said: “Are Trump and Elon going to support me in the run-up to 2029? Well, that’s what friends are for, isn’t it?”
Additional reporting by Eleanor Olcott in Beijing
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