Elon Musk's curious fixation with Britain
Elon Musk has waded into UK affairs a lot lately
In 2012, Elon Musk had just completed a business trip to London and Oxford. "Just returned… I met with many interesting people," he wrote on Twitter. "I really like Britain!"
Fast-forward to 2024, and Musk's views on Britain are a little different.
"Civil war is inevitable" … "Britain is going full Stalin"… "The people of Britain have had enough of a tyrannical police state".
These are just some of his recent comments on X, as he renamed the site after he bought it.
He has repeatedly got into spats with politicians including Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, he has amplified voices on the right and far-right online and is in talks to donate to Reform UK, according to the party's leader Nigel Farage.
So why has Musk's relationship with America's closest ally apparently soured and what, if anything, does he hope to achieve?
We would love to ask him ourselves but he didn't respond to our requests for an interview.
His X timeline offers some clues though.
The self-proclaimed "Chief Troll Officer" often exaggerates in an ambiguous way, unclear if he's being sincere or ironic.
When he writes, "Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?" he doesn't really mean that Britain is a totalitarian Communist state but also, he sort of does. Often he reposts content with just a single word - "interesting" - or an emoji, rather than going into details.
In recent years, however, Musk watchers have noticed that the kinds of things he boosts to his 200 million followers tend to come from a particular place: a world view that is libertarian and "anti-woke", against progressives and centrists.
What's happening in the UK?'
The shift was explicit during last summer's riots following the horrific killing of three girls at a dance class in the north-west England town of Southport.
False rumours about the attacker were circulated on X, including by far-right accounts which had been unbanned since Musk took over the company two years before.
As a protest turned violent and rioting flared, Sir Keir issued a warning: "To large social media companies, and those who run them - violent disorder, clearly whipped up online, that is also a crime.
"It's happening on your premises, and the law must be upheld everywhere."
Musk replied with one word: "Insane".
Later, he would state that "civil war is inevitable" and spread a false message from the leader of a far-right party, claiming that Sir Keir was considering building detainment camps for rioters on the Falkland Islands. By the time he deleted the post, it had been viewed more than a million times.
Musk also criticised Britain's "prison overcrowding situation" on Joe Rogan's podcast - watched 19m times on YouTube - saying we should "make Orwell fiction again", a reference to George Orwell's writings about dystopian society.
While free speech is not Musk's only big issue - he appears to care a lot about existential questions around the future of humanity too - it's a subject that the Tesla, SpaceX and X owner has repeatedly returned to.
Just a few weeks ago, in response to a tweet from a right-wing American influencer, making an exaggerated claim about a report from the last government on radicalisation, he commented: "What is happening in the UK?"
And he may be planning to do more than tweet. He was recently pictured with Farage and Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy, amid reports he is preparing to donate a large sum of money to the party.
Why Musk cares about Britain
Musk's interest in UK affairs could be a reflection of how his own political beliefs have changed. He previously described himself as a centrist and even donated to Hillary Clinton's campaign, but now he talks a lot about the "woke mind virus".
According to interviews he's given and a recent biography, the transition of one of his children from male to female - and that child, Vivian Wilson, subsequently cutting him off from her life - appears to be one of the key turning points.
Winston Marshall, a former Mumford & Sons guitarist turned podcast host and right-leaning political commentator whose father jointly owns TV channel GB News, speculates that Musk could be picking fights because "he cares very deeply about the UK".
"Britain is the birthplace of liberal democracy, of many of the great philosophies that underpin America," Marshall says.
"So then he looks over to the UK and he sees what's been going on for several years, but which is now crescendoing after the August riots, with many, many people being given long jail sentences for literally Facebook memes in some cases."
"Facebook memes" sounds pretty harmless but these examples include - for instance - a three-month jail sentence for a person who posted a meme along with the caption "let's [expletive] riot" on a Facebook group with "riot/protest" in the name during the Southport disorder.
Some question whether the tycoon is really as committed to free speech as he claims.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, which scrutinises social media companies, was critical of Musk's tenure at X - prompting the tycoon to sue, accusing the organisation of misusing data and scaring off advertisers. The case was thrown out by a US judge.
Its CEO Imran Ahmed called the incident "indicative of the mindset of a man who simply cannot understand that freedom of speech is a freedom afforded to all, not just to him".
Other critics have pointed out that Musk has been careful not to criticise the president of China, a country where Tesla has huge business interests, despite Beijing's well-documented culture of censorship.
He has far less at stake, business-wise, in Britain, but the country could still affect his bottom line via the Online Safety Act, passed by Parliament in late 2023. It will allow regulator Ofcom to issue huge fines to social media companies if they're found to have certain types of illegal content on their platforms.
Andrew Chadwick, professor of political communication at Loughborough University, explains that while some provisions in the bill are uncontroversial, "where it gets a bit more tricky is where this illegal content blurs across into what we might call the kinds of disinformation or misinformation that we see circulate on a daily basis on social media platforms".
This could include "racially or religiously aggravated public order offences or the incitement of violence," he says.
The Act comes with some potentially huge punishments – a fine of up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue.
Could it be that Musk is worried about Britain biting off a chunk of X's revenues – or even, as the Act allows for in some circumstances, blocking access to the site in the UK?
Defenders of the Act argue that it's got nothing to do with censoring free speech. Gawain Towler, former head of press for Reform UK, says while Musk might not have "a forensic knowledge of all the details of backbench committee" he does "see the bigger picture" – what Reform activists and others describe as a creeping culture of censorship.
"You don't have to concentrate always on the trees. And I think Musk sees the forest quite, quite well," he adds.
Nobody can read the mind of the world's richest man.
But it's clear that Musk has funnelled his vast wealth into influence and is now exporting his values – including a mainstream American view of free speech and largely unfettered capitalism – around the world.
And one thing's for sure – he's not yet done with the UK.
Musk flexes influence over Congress in shutdown drama
A funny thing happened on the way to a bipartisan agreement to fund US government operations and avoid a partial shutdown this week.
Conservatives in Congress – encouraged by tech multi-billionaire Elon Musk – balked.
Republicans tried to regroup on Thursday afternoon, offering a new, slimmed-down package to fund the government. That vote failed, as 38 Republicans joined most Democrats in voting no.
All this political drama provides just a taste of the chaos and unpredictability that could be in store under unified Republican rule in Washington next year.
The man at the centre of this week's drama holds no official government title or role. What Elon Musk does have, however, is hundreds of billions of dollars, a social media megaphone and the ear not just of the president of the United States but also rank-and-file conservatives in Congress.
On Wednesday morning, the tech tycoon took to X, which he purchased for $44bn two years ago, to disparage a compromise that Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had struck with Democrats to temporarily fund US government operations until mid-March.
As the number of his posts about the proposed agreement stretched into triple digits, at times amplifying factually inaccurate allegations made by conservative commentators, opposition to the legislation in Congress grew.
And by Wednesday evening, Donald Trump – perhaps sensing that he needed to get in front of the growing conservative uprising - publicly stated that he, too, opposed the government funding bill.
He said it contained wasteful spending and Democratic priorities, while also demanding that Congress take the politically sensitive step of raising – or even doing away with - the legal cap on newly issued American debt that the US would reach sometime next summer.
Support for the stopgap spending bill then collapsed, forcing Johnson and his leadership team to scramble to find an alternative path forward. As they did, Musk celebrated, proclaiming that "the voice of the people has triumphed".
It may be more accurate, however, to say that it was Musk's voice that triumphed.
On Thursday afternoon, Republicans unveiled a new proposal that suspended the debt limit for the first two years of Trump's second term, funded the government until March and included some disaster relief and other measures included in the original funding package.
But Musk's involvement may not land well with some legislators. Democrats in the chamber joked about "President Musk", while even a few Republicans publicly grumbled.
"Who?" Pennsylvania Republican Glenn Thompson responded when asked about Musk. "I don't see him in the chamber."
A majority in name only
Musk may have been the instigator, but this latest congressional funding crisis reveals what has been – and is likely to continue to be – an ongoing challenge for the narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
For two years, Republicans in the chamber have grappled with keeping a united front amidst a party populated, at least in part, by politicians with an active contempt for the government they help to run.
Internal divisions delayed Kevin McCarthy's election as speaker of the House in January 2022 and led to his removal – a first in American history – the following year. Johnson ultimately replaced him, but only after weeks of leaderless limbo.
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Some Republicans had hoped that with Trump's election, members of their majority, which will become even slimmer when the new Congress is sworn in next month, would be more willing to march in lockstep to support the new president's agenda. And some are.
"I think President Trump pretty much laid out the plan, so I don't know what the discussions are about," Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna told reporters after internal Republican meetings on Thursday afternoon.
What this week has revealed, however, is that the president-elect may not always offer the legislature the clear, consistent direction it requires.
His insistence on raising the debt limit, for instance, caught many in his own party by surprise. And outside influences, such as from Musk or others, could inject extra instability into the process.
If Republicans aren't able to reach near unanimity in the House, they will have to find ways to win over Democrats if they want to achieve any kind of legislative success. And what this week showed (once again) is that the kind of political compromises necessary could prompt a greater number of Republican defections.
Trump's party will be challenged to effectively govern on its own – but it also may not be able to tolerate governing with the help of Democrats.
If there is no political equilibrium in the chamber, it would put Trump's more ambitious legislative priorities at risk before he even takes office.
Republicans may yet find a way to avoid a lengthy government shutdown through a temporary budget resolution, even though the first round of pressure from Trump resulted in an embarrassing failure to win enough support within his own party.
For Johnson, however, the damage may have already been done. His authority over House Republicans has been undercut – first by Musk and then by Trump - just a few weeks before he stands for re-election as speaker of the House.
Already one Republican, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has said he will not support Johnson's re-election. Others, including members of Johnson's own leadership team, have been noncommittal. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand Georgia congresswoman who unsuccessfully pushed to remove Johnson in May, suggested Musk become speaker.
Meanwhile, Trump – the one man who could throw Johnson a lifeline – has been equivocal, telling Fox News that Johnson could "easily" remain speaker if he "acts decisively and tough".
Decisiveness may not be enough, however, when every direction for the speaker appears to lead to a dead end.
North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of US politics in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.