
In 2012, Elon Musk had simply accomplished a enterprise journey to London and Oxford. “Simply returned… I met with many fascinating individuals,” he wrote on Twitter. “I actually like Britain!”
Quick-forward to 2024, and Musk’s views on Britain are just a little completely different.
“Civil struggle is inevitable” … “Britain goes full Stalin”… “The individuals of Britain have had sufficient of a tyrannical police state”.
These are simply a few of his current feedback on X, as he renamed the positioning after he purchased it.
He has repeatedly received into spats with politicians together with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, he has amplified voices on the appropriate and far-right on-line and is in talks to donate to Reform UK, in keeping with the occasion’s chief Nigel Farage.
So why has Musk’s relationship with America’s closest ally apparently soured and what, if something, does he hope to realize?
We might like to ask him ourselves however he did not reply to our requests for an interview.
His X timeline gives some clues although.
The self-proclaimed “Chief Troll Officer” usually exaggerates in an ambiguous approach, unclear if he is being honest or ironic.
When he writes, “Is that this Britain or the Soviet Union?” he does not actually imply that Britain is a totalitarian Communist state but in addition, he form of does. Typically he reposts content material with only a single phrase – “fascinating” – or an emoji, quite than going into particulars.
In recent times, nonetheless, Musk watchers have seen that the sorts of issues he boosts to his 200 million followers have a tendency to come back from a specific place: a world view that’s libertarian and “anti-woke”, towards progressives and centrists.
‘What’s taking place within the UK?’
The shift was specific throughout final summer time’s riots following the horrific killing of three women at a dance class within the north-west England city of Southport.
False rumours concerning the attacker had been circulated on X, together with by far-right accounts which had been unbanned since Musk took over the corporate two years earlier than.
As a protest turned violent and rioting flared, Sir Keir issued a warning: “To massive social media corporations, and those that run them – violent dysfunction, clearly whipped up on-line, that can also be against the law.
“It is taking place in your premises, and the regulation should be upheld in all places.”
Musk replied with one phrase: “Insane”.

Later, he would state that “civil struggle is inevitable” and unfold a false message from the chief of a far-right occasion, claiming that Sir Keir was contemplating constructing detainment camps for rioters on the Falkland Islands. By the point he deleted the publish, it had been considered greater than one million instances.
Musk additionally criticised Britain’s “jail overcrowding state of affairs” on Joe Rogan’s podcast – watched 19m instances on YouTube – saying we should always “make Orwell fiction once more”, a reference to George Orwell’s writings about dystopian society.
Whereas free speech just isn’t Musk’s solely massive situation – he seems to care quite a bit about existential questions round the way forward for humanity too – it is a topic that the Tesla, SpaceX and X proprietor has repeatedly returned to.
Just some weeks in the past, in response to a tweet from a right-wing American influencer, making an exaggerated declare a few report from the final authorities on radicalisation, he commented: “What is going on within the UK?”
And he could also be planning on doing greater than tweet. He was just lately pictured with Farage and Reform UK treasurer Nick Sweet, amid experiences he’s getting ready to donate a big sum of cash to the occasion.
Why Musk cares about Britain
Musk’s curiosity in UK affairs might be a mirrored image of how his personal political opinions have modified. He beforehand described himself as a centrist and even donated to Hillary Clinton’s marketing campaign, however now he talks quite a bit concerning the “woke thoughts virus”.
In response to interviews he is given and a current biography, the transition of one among his youngsters from male to feminine – and that youngster, Vivian Wilson, subsequently slicing him off from her life – seems to be one of many key turning factors.
Winston Marshall, a former Mumford & Sons guitarist turned podcast host and right-leaning political commentator whose father collectively owns TV channel GB Information, speculates that Musk might be choosing fights as a result of “he cares very deeply concerning the UK”.
“Britain is the birthplace of liberal democracy, of lots of the nice philosophies that underpin America,” Marshall says.
“So then he seems over to the UK and he sees what’s been occurring for a number of years, however which is now crescendoing after the August riots, with many, many individuals being given lengthy jail sentences for actually Fb memes in some instances.”
“Fb memes” sounds fairly innocent however these examples embody – for example – a three-month jail sentence for an individual who posted a meme together with the caption “let’s [expletive] riot” on a Fb group with “riot/protest” within the identify throughout the Southport dysfunction.

Some query whether or not the tycoon is actually as dedicated to free speech as he claims.
The Heart for Countering Digital Hate, which scrutinises social media corporations, was crucial of Musk’s tenure at X – prompting the tycoon to sue, accusing the organisation of misusing information and scaring off advertisers. The case was thrown out by a US choose.
Its CEO Imran Ahmed known as the incident “indicative of the mindset of a person who merely can’t perceive that freedom of speech is a freedom afforded to all, not simply to him”.
Different critics have identified that Musk has been cautious to not criticise the president of China, a rustic the place Tesla has enormous enterprise pursuits, regardless of Beijing’s well-documented tradition of censorship.
He has far much less at stake, business-wise, in Britain, however the nation may nonetheless have an effect on his backside line by way of the On-line Security Act, handed by Parliament in late 2023. It would permit regulator Ofcom to situation enormous fines to social media corporations in the event that they’re discovered to have sure kinds of unlawful content material on their platforms.
Andrew Chadwick, professor of political communication at Loughborough College, explains that whereas some provisions within the invoice are uncontroversial, “the place it will get a bit extra tough is the place this unlawful content material blurs throughout into what we would name the sorts of disinformation or misinformation that we see flow into every day on social media platforms”.
This might embody “racially or religiously aggravated public order offences or the incitement of violence,” he says.
The Act comes with some probably enormous punishments – a positive of as much as 10% of qualifying worldwide income.
May or not it’s that Musk is nervous about Britain biting off a bit of X’s revenues – and even, because the Act permits for in some circumstances, blocking entry to the positioning within the UK?
Defenders of the Act argue that it is received nothing to do with censoring free speech. Gawain Towler, former head of press for Reform UK, says whereas Musk won’t have “a forensic data of all the small print of backbench committee” he does “see the larger image” – what Reform activists and others describe as a creeping tradition of censorship.
“You do not have to pay attention at all times on the timber. And I feel Musk sees the forest fairly, fairly nicely,” he provides.
No one can learn the thoughts of the world’s richest man.
However it’s clear that Musk has funnelled his huge wealth into affect and is now exporting his values – together with a mainstream American view of free speech and largely unfettered capitalism – around the globe.
And one factor’s for certain – he isn’t but performed with the UK.