Musk now takes aim at Nigel Farage

[Emrys]

Most of you'll be aware that Musk's been sticking his beak into matters outside America he knows nothing about yet again, recently going apeshit with demands for Keir Starmer and others in the UK Labour government to resign or be unseated, preferably even thrown in jail for supposedly covering up the activities of "Muslim rape gangs" in the UK over the years (in reality, Starmer in his time as Director of Public Prosecutions was instrumental in making sure the issue was addressed more effectively, the shortcomings generally lying at the level of local police and local government - I have plenty of gripes with Starmer, but this isn't one of them).

The UK's insurgent Reform Party (which Musk has heavily hinted he intends financing to the tune of millions of dollars) and its owner/leader Nigel Farage (it's a limited company literally owned by Farage, not a political party in the normal sense of the term) have been whooping it up at these attacks on Labour and burblings of support for Reform.

However, Farage had some problems with Musk's call for long-time con man, liar, major grifter, hooligan, domestic abuser and incorrigible criminal "Tommy Robinson" (alias Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon) to be released from jail where he's languishing for flagrant contempt of court. (Musk's ignorance extends to the fact that Robinson has done nothing to address numerous allegations and cases of sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation among his own raggle-taggle team over the years, but that's no surprise.)

In his quest for electoral acceptability, Farage has been trying to distance himself from Robinson and the activities of the often violent far-right thugs he gathers around him for quite some time, and did so again a couple of days ago when challenged about Musk's call for Robinson's release from prison, saying that he was glad of Musk's support but couldn't be expected to agree with Musk about everything.

Predictably, it seems Musk disagrees:



(That's a screencap, I've checked and the tweet's genuine, but won't post it because the reaction'll no doubt just distract from the issues.)

Since Musk seems to be peppering the intertubes with multiple inane tweets per hour at the moment, seemingly having nothing better to do with his time, we'll have to wait and see whether he pursues an extended vendetta against Farage, or hares after the next squirrel that manages to penetrate his ketamine-addled consciousness instead. Meanwhile, I suspect Farage may hunker down and play possum till the coast's clear.

[X-posted in General Discussion - https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219875133 ]

[wolfie001]

1. He single-handedly hurt the British economy for the next 5-10 years

I guess much more suffering is in the cards

[LeftishBrit]

2. Good. Another circular firing squad on the Right.

Farage and Musk (and Trump) are narcissists, and narcissists rarely get on for very long.

[T_i_B]

3. We'll see how many right wingers join in with this nonsense

Space Karen is inconsistent and really quite fickle. And many of his changes to Twitter, such as making the block function useless inconvenience right wingers as much as anyone else.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Seems the new Reform UK rules still keep Farage pretty safe

But members will be able to remove Farage - or any other party leader - in a no-confidence vote.

A vote can be triggered if 50% of all members write to the chairman requesting a motion of no confidence.

Reform MPs can also force a vote if 50 of them, or 50% of them, write to the chairman requesting one. But this only applies if there are more than 100 Reform MPs in Parliament - a high bar.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r8q99vx1ko

Reform claims over 170,000 members now. I wonder if "write to" means "by post", or if it includes email. If the former, I think almost any leader would be confident under half their members would bother with a stamp (and those most likely to be a Musk acolyte are those least likely to use the post). They'd also need to forget that Farage has been the only UKIP etc. politician capable of getting them treated by both the media and electorate seriously at the same time.

Farage really just needs to work out if he can still get that sweet money out of Musk somehow. It may be that Musk got a strong batch of ketamine for Christmas, and will calm down on his "rule-the-world" tweets in a few weeks.

[Emrys]

5. A few updates since I posted the OP

To set the scene, this was Musk revving up to his anti Starmer tweet blitz vendetta a couple of days ago:



The focus shifted after that, and Farage with Musk was a trending topic on Twitter yesterday and overnight after Musk's call for Farage to be unseated. Pitched battles between Farage loyalists and Musk fanciers who also fancied Tommy Robinson raged all night, the main upshot being that a number saw multimillionaire Reform MP Rupert Lowe, relatively Robinson-agnostic if not Robinson-friendly, emerge as a favourite to take over from Farage should a vacancy arise.



It also emerged that Farage wasn't sufficiently rabidly anti-Muslim for a number of tweeters' tastes after he made the outrageous claim that deporting every Muslim in the UK might be going a bit far, as well as stretching various resources.

Meanwhile, Farage appeared to enjoy a light but invigorating fluffing on BBC 1 television's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg political magazine show. One of his claims was that people were angry (and none more so than Elon Musk, apparently, who knew nothing about the issue at all until a couple of days ago and is now a World Expert on it and the entirety of UK politics) that there's been no full public inquiry into the rape gang cases and allegations.

Kuenssberg didn't bother to point out (or quite possibly didn't know) that precisely such an inquiry had reported its findings in 2022 under the previous government. Oh well.

After having otherwise lain low, Farage did finally address Musk's outburst on Twitter:



Raheem Kassam, a former editor-in-chief of Breitbart UK and former chief adviser to Farage, was a bit more succinct:



Now here's Nazir Afzal, whose term of office as Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England overlapped with Starmer's term as Director of Public Prosecutions and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service. Afzal, working closely with Starmer, focused on violence against women and sexual exploitation of children during his time in office. He tackled shortcomings in the handling of grooming rings and the reticence of the authorities to address such issues among the Asian community for fear of accusations of racism, kicking off by overturning a previous decision not to pursue investigations into the Rochdale child sex abuse ring. He also correctly emphasized that the great majority of paedophiles in the uK are white. His efforts against grooming gangs earned him criticism among the Asian community and, ironically in view of the current fuss, calls by the far right for him to be dismissed and deported, which led to his requiring police protection (he was born in Birmingham, so they wouldn't have had to deport him far):

nazir afzal
@nazirafzal

Some commenting on child sexual abuse following some “intervention” from the USA

They might want to consider that Starmer left office with the highest number of convictions for child sexual abuse since records began

100s more abusers brought to justice
1000s more victims heard

It's perhaps not a coincidence, or perhaps sheer gleeful opportunism, that Alexander Dugin, "Putin's brain" and a prime mover in his war on Ukraine, tweeted yesterday:



He spoilt it a bit by overshooting somewhat in another tweet:



And as I type, Starmer has just held a press conference to address the misinformation about his conduct as Director of Public Prosecutions - it seems in general terms (Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has been feverishly stirring the pot, among many others) rather than directly addressing Musk. I'm sure we'll here more about that during the course of today. What I've heard has echoed Afzal's account above, along with an accusation that Robinson's extra-legal conduct almost led to the collapse of at least one child sexual abuse case, which I seem to recall was reported at the time.

Once this has all blown over (if it ever does), Starmer may want to have a word with his newly appointed Ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson, who last week was looking forward to tapping into Farage's alleged inside track to Trump to smooth the UK's way through the new presidency.

And final word, for now at least, to Larry the Cat:



[Also X-posted on General Discussion - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=19877152 ]

[T_i_B]

6. One basic problem with right wing grandstanding on Rotherham

Is that none of them have the foggiest idea where Rotherham is, let alone any genuine concern about the victims of sexual abuse there who were allowed to slip through the net.

At the general election the Conservatives didn't even stand a candidate in Rotherham.

What happened in the past in Rotherham was disgusting. But the avalanche of grifting gobshites attempting to score debating points on the subject without ever offering anything constructive to improve things in Rotherham is also repellent.