{"id":19426,"date":"2025-01-06T19:32:33","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T20:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19426"},"modified":"2025-01-06T21:25:17","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T21:25:17","slug":"elon-musk-and-his-megaphone-x-rattle-british-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19426","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk and His Megaphone, X, Rattle British Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With 211 million followers on social media, the multibillionaire seems intent on using his global platform to rattle British politics.<\/p>\n

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When Elon Musk asked his 211 million followers on X to vote on whether \u201cAmerica should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government,\u201d it seemed as if the post could only be tongue-in-cheek.<\/p>\n

But coming after a barrage of strident posts about Britain by Mr. Musk \u2014 assailing the Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer; demanding the release of a jailed far-right agitator; and breaking with a hard-right leader, Nigel Farage<\/a> \u2014 it came off less as a joke than a flex by a powerful man relishing his ability to roil the politics of another country.<\/p>\n

Mr. Musk\u2019s posts, which popped up on X throughout the holiday like unwelcome guests at a Christmas party, have thoroughly hijacked the political debate in Britain at the start of 2025.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Mr. Starmer used a news conference<\/a> about fixing Britain\u2019s National Health Service to deny Mr. Musk\u2019s allegations that he had not acted when he was Britain\u2019s chief prosecutor more than a decade ago against gangs that sexually abused girls.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Farage, for his part, faced questions about his future as the leader of the right-wing anti-immigration party Reform U.K. after Mr. Musk declared on X on Sunday that \u201cFarage doesn\u2019t have what it takes<\/a>.\u201d A day later, Mr. Farage posted a call for a national inquiry into the cases of child sexual abuse, picking up on one of Mr. Musk\u2019s favorite causes.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusk has a very distorted understanding of British politics, and yet he\u2019s got a megaphone,\u201d said Robert Ford, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester. \u201cWhen he says this stuff at 3 a.m. on a Sunday night, it disrupts Labour\u2019s whole N.H.S. press conference on Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n

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With 211 million followers on social media, the multibillionaire seems intent on using his global platform to rattle British politics.When Elon Musk asked his 211 million followers on X to vote on whether \u201cAmerica should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government,\u201d it seemed as if the post could only be tongue-in-cheek.But coming after a barrage of strident posts about Britain by Mr. Musk \u2014 assailing the Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer; demanding the release of a jailed far-right agitator; and breaking with a hard-right leader, Nigel Farage \u2014 it came off less as a joke than a flex by a powerful man relishing his ability to roil the politics of another country.Mr. Musk\u2019s posts, which popped up on X throughout the holiday like unwelcome guests at a Christmas party, have thoroughly hijacked the political debate in Britain at the start of 2025.On Monday, Mr. Starmer used a news conference about fixing Britain\u2019s National Health Service to deny Mr. Musk\u2019s allegations that he had not acted when he was Britain\u2019s chief prosecutor more than a decade ago against gangs that sexually abused girls.Mr. Farage, for his part, faced questions about his future as the leader of the right-wing anti-immigration party Reform U.K. after Mr. Musk declared on X on Sunday that \u201cFarage doesn\u2019t have what it takes.\u201d A day later, Mr. Farage posted a call for a national inquiry into the cases of child sexual abuse, picking up on one of Mr. Musk\u2019s favorite causes.\u201cMusk has a very distorted understanding of British politics, and yet he\u2019s got a megaphone,\u201d said Robert Ford, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester. \u201cWhen he says this stuff at 3 a.m. on a Sunday night, it disrupts Labour\u2019s whole N.H.S. press conference on Monday.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19428,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19426"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19429,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19426\/revisions\/19429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}