I hope this is just the start of more coverage of splits - which are a long time coming - among Reform, which has been coasting along, with complacent media coverage, on the unbelievably flatfooted and politically inept start to Labour's term in office and the abject and well-deserved decline in the Tories' fortunes.
The whole thing is grimly laughable, but the threat of Musk's funding boosting Reform is only tempered by the fact that Reform is a hapless loose collection of dysfunctional electoral rejects who have a proven track record of fucking up big time. If I've learned anything from observing UK fringe politics and using the past as a guide, throwing lashings of cash at them would only hasten that process and make it more spectacular.
Optimistically, despite current polling which shows Reform as a potentially significant force, the trajectory in UK politics has been that the more electoral success far-right parties like UKIP and reform and their fellow travellers have enjoyed, the quicker they've dissolved into chaos and infighting. They can still do serious harm (as in Brexit and last year's race riots, which Farage tried desperately to distance himself from), but the cherry of ultimate power has eluded them so far.
One thing about Twitter is that access to it if you're on a posting kick is so instantaneous that it can give uncanny insights into the tweeter's state of mind. I don't know whether Musk's ever been diagnosed as manic among his other evident disorders, but from a lay perspective, that's what it looks like.
If I was a shareholder in any of his companies, I'd be concerned (as well as questioning my past lack of sound judgement).
The merkin thing hadn't crossed my radar yet, but I'll rely on the sometimes colorfully savage wit among the remaining sane UK Twitterati to treat it with with the gravitas it deserves and drag Musk mercilessly and at length about it once again.
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