Musk vs. Farage, speed hating goes wrong

W ell, it appears that Nigel Farage is going to have to look elsewhere for a multi-million-pound donation from a far-right billionaire sugar daddy. Fresh from falling out with Donald Trump’s MAGA base, Elon Musk has now fallen out with Farage over the latter’s failure to support the fascist thug Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, whom Musk recently described as a ‘political prisoner’.

On Sunday afternoon, just hours after Farage had been singing Musk’s praises on the Laura Kuenssberg Show on BBC1 – because, of course, the BBC is platforming him yet again – Musk tweeted that Farage does not “have what it takes” to lead Reform UK. Musk X-creted: “The Reform party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes.”

Imagine just how insanely off the edge of the fascist far-right you need to be in order to think that Nigel Farage isn’t right-wing enough for you. But that’s a foreign oligarch who, as things stand, could have a major influence in shaping British politics. It’s not drag queens who are trying to exert a malignant influence on your kids. It’s Elon Musk.

Farage is finding out the hard way that when you cosy up to a far-right racist billionaire with very thin skin, there is no difference between merely refusing to wholeheartedly endorse everything Musk says and actively insulting him. To the malignant narcissist, both are exactly the same, and both will be met with a determination to destroy the person who slighted the narcissist’s exceptionally fragile ego. Ash Regan and Alba take note. Sup wi the deil and ye need a lang spoon.

Musk has been tweeting a lot about British politics in recent days, and he has gone full in support for Yaxley-Lennon and his demands for King Charles to dissolve Parliament and call a fresh general election due to what Musk claimed was Starmer’s failure to bring “rape gangs” to justice when he was director of public prosecutions. Not only does Musk not understand how general elections work in the UK, but as is typical for the hard right, the only election results that he respects are those which are won by the hard right.

Musk seems to be using the grooming gangs scandal as a tool to stoke up racial hatred and to promote his favoured brand of far-right white nationalist politics.

In fact, research from 2015 found that of 1,231 perpetrators of “group and gang-based child sexual exploitation”, 42% were white, 14% were defined as Asian or Asian British, and 17% were black. The 2010 convictions of a group of white men and a woman for abusing 30 children in the Camborne area of Cornwall were all but ignored by far-right figures as it did not suit their racist narrative.

A 2020 study by the Home Office stated: “Research has found that group-based Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) offenders are most commonly White. Some studies suggest an over-representation of Black and Asian offenders relative to the demographics of national populations. However, it is not possible to conclude that this is representative of all group-based CSE offending.”

What is certainly true is that the far-right is attempting to weaponise this issue in order to promote its own racist agenda and is doing so with little or no regard for the needs and feelings of the victims of such abuse and with no regard whatsoever for members of minority communities who are unfairly victimised by their racist claims.

In response to Musk’s call for Farage to be replaced, many Reform supporters are demanding mass deportations and are calling for Rupert Lowe, the Reform MP for Great Yarmouth, to become leader. Lowe is perhaps best known in Scotland for his call to abolish Holyrood. Reform supporters are now openly backing the same racist and fascist policies put forward by the National Front in the 70s and 80s. The mask is well and truly off.

Musk’s interference in British politics is dangerous. He is stoking up hatred against minority communities and threatening to destabilise all of British politics with threats of massive multi-million-pound donations to his favoured fascist parties. He is already creating significant damage with his far-right social media echo chamber, which is a major source of disinformation and the propagation of conspiracy theories.

It is a matter of urgency that Westminster takes action to protect democracy from the malign actions of foreign oligarchs. Government bodies and institutions should cease legitimising Musk’s toxic and harmful social media platform by posting on it. Musk is a bully. You don’t deal with bullies by placating them or hoping that you can change their behaviour. You deal with them by excising their influence over you.

The way in which political parties are funded also needs a radical overhaul. An obscenely rich man like Musk can easily find a way around the legal prohibition on political donations by non-resident foreigners. All political donations need to be capped. For all the focus on the SNP’s finances, it has never accepted massive donations in the hundreds of thousands or millions from the extremely rich or from big businesses like Labour and the Conservatives regularly do. I know which I consider to be more corrupt. Yet we are supposed to believe that these donations are made out of the goodness of the hearts of vampire capitalists. A democracy which can be bought is no democracy at all.

Of course, reforming the system of political donations is very far from being the ‘change’ that Starmer had in mind. Starmer is addicted to corporate donations for everything from his suits to his football tickets. He’s not about to cut himself and his party off from all that cash, even if it does mean leaving democracy exposed to the likes of a racist billionaire who wants to install a fascist government.

It’s far too early to tell how the Musk-Farage spat will play out. Farage’s position as leader of Reform seems secure as it is a private limited company in which he has a majority stake. Reform does not have as many members as it has subscribers. It’s more likely that Farage, the grifter that he is, will attempt to placate Musk by moving Reform even more to the fascist right than it already is. That is a deeply alarming prospect. Scotland needs to extricate itself from this dysfunctional so-called union as fast as possible. Democracy and decency both depend on it.

GOING FURTHER

• Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation -- Characteristics of Offending | UK HOME OFFICE

Sources:

▪ This piece was first published in Wee Ginger Dug and re-published in PUBLIC SQUARE UK on 8 January 2025 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.

▪ Cover: AI-generated image/Grok.