Elon Musk spreads persistent lies about “grooming gangs”

The report that caught Musk’s attention earlier this week claimed that Protection Minister Jess Phillips had rejected a city council request for a government-led investigation into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, a town near Manchester in northern England that was one of the areas that came to light. It includes allegations of abuse by grooming gangs.

While Musk and his allies claim this is part of a larger government cover-up, Phillips actually wrote in a letter that “it is solely the responsibility of Oldham Council to decide to conduct an investigation into child sexual exploitation locally, and it is not for the government to get involved.” Likewise, the previous Conservative-led government rejected Oldham’s calls for a government-led inquiry in 2022.

Musk called for Phillips to be imprisoned and described her as a “rape genocide apologist.” Both Musk and Phillips did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Musk is also using the report to once again call for Starmer to be sacked as Prime Minister.

“Starmer was complicit in the usurpation of Britain when he was chief prosecutor for 6 years,” Musk wrote on X on Friday morning, in a post now pinned to the top of his timeline. He added: “Starmer must go and face charges of complicity in the worst mass crime in British history.”

Starmer, as Director of Public Prosecutions more than a decade ago, began prosecuting a grooming ring in Rochdale and introduced new rules aimed at allowing sexual assault cases to be tried.

Starmer and the British government press office did not respond to comment, but the Minister of Health did Wes Streeting told the BBC Musk’s comments were “misjudged and certainly misleading.”

Musk has also attracted a number of right-wing American figures who have been drawn into the conversation, including accounts such as Chaya Raichek, who runs the virulently anti-LGBTQ account LibsofTikTok, anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, right-wing commentator Ian Miles Cheung, and disgraced ex. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

US Senator Mike Lee also chimed in, writing on X: “Does the UK need to liberalize?”

“Yes,” Musk replied.

Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager and Trump supporter, repeated Musk’s account almost verbatim in a post on X. He then asked whether the president-elect would “consider appropriate sanctions against the United Kingdom until these concerns are addressed.”

In a post on Friday morning, Musk reinforced King Charles’ call to dissolve the UK Parliament and order a general election. While in the UK the monarch does dissolve Parliament before a general election, this is only done at the request of the Prime Minister, and in reality the monarch’s authority is little more than a rubber stamp.