The UK local elections date of May 1st could send out a political and media distress signal against the backdrop of Reform’s continuing populist surge in the opinion polls, Donald Trump’s return to the White House and Elon Musk’s determination / presumption that he has the power to decide how Britain is run and who by...
The New European January 9-15th front cover floated an image of Nigel Farage lost among the stars in a SpaceX suit above the headline, ‘Cast Adrift... Out of Musk’s orbit, Farage faces an uncertain future’.
But if authors Alastair Campbell and James Ball hoped the rift might derail Farage and Reform’s pre-election surge, it appears wishful thinking. Latest opinion polls show Reform ahead of the Tories and on a par with Labour, with the momentum in Farage’s favour. No wonder, then, Farage’s fury over the nine councils (mainly Tory) that have postponed their local elections on May 1st, potentially diluting the political scale and media impact of Reform’s performance.
Worse (for those of us of a left leaning persuasion), the ‘bromance’ tiff between Farage and Musk appears to be healing. Both were VIP guests at the inauguration celebrations with the Reform leader insisting their relationship was much warmer than the Washington temperature outside. A Musk source concurred while admitting lingering coolness over their conflicting views on whether Tommy Robinson is a hero or villain.
Agenda setting
Musk’s ability to dominate the news and political agenda had been on display with the January 17th ‘partial surrender’ on grooming gang investigations announced in the Commons by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. She didn’t mention Musk at all, but virtually every BBC, Sky, ITV and GB News bulletin did acknowledge his influence. So did every national paper.
The same night, an ‘Elon Musk, friend or foe of Britain’ heated debate became part of the BBC 1’s Question Time programme. With panellist Nadine Dorries praising Musk’s role while struggling to distance herself from his X platform depiction of Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips, a woman who has devoted her life to protecting vulnerable women and girls as a ‘rape genocide apologist’.
Simultaneously, the government’s sudden shift on grooming gang investigations led BBC 2’s Newsnight with a heavy focus on Musk’s role. One guest, Britain’s pre-eminent political historian, Sir Anthony Seldon, labelled the tech multi-billionaire’s interference in UK politics ‘sinister’.
That said, there is a valid debate on whether a grooming gang national inquiry is justified. Prominent Labour figures, including Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, beg to differ with the Starmer stance. So does Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, who did much to expose the Pakistani grooming gang scandals. So, too, the Guardian’s otherwise Musk-debunking columnist Marina Hyde. So, too, many of my own Labour contacts, predicting that between Musk tweets and Reform and Tory support for a national investigation, Starmer could be forced to turn partial surrender into full surrender to try and mitigate the local election damage it inflicts on Labour.
Fleet Street’s reaction
No hesitation on the part of increasingly Reform-supportive titles like the Telegraph and Express in lauding the ‘Elon effect’. Along with the man himself, they will keep the grooming gang issue burning all the way through to May 1st and beyond. Even the Guardian conceded: “It is undeniable that ministers have been pushed into moving further and faster on the long-running scandal after it was taken up Elon Musk, whose often misleading comments on the subject were seized on by the Tories and others.”
The Daily Mail’s position on Musk is intriguingly different. Its January 17th front page headline reaction to Yvette Cooper’s shift: LABOUR BLASTED OVER ‘TOOTHLESS’ GROOMING PROBES. Barely a mention of Musk, with the focus on under pressure Tory leader Kemi Badenoch arguing the pro national inquiry case. Not surprising, perhaps, given its January 16th edition carried a double page Daily Mail special investigation headlined, ‘What Elon Musk needs to know about Tommy Robinson... the race baiting thug and fraud who he is now lauding as a free-speech martyr.’
The paper blasted Musk’s ‘lionising’ of Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) as a ‘political prisoner’ and flagged up, ‘Musk asked on his social media platform X: ‘Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth? He should be freed and those who covered up this travesty should take his place in that cell.’
Although the Mail hasn’t followed the Telegraph and Express down the Reform and Farage as a potential prime minister road, it applauded him for resisting Musk’s demand the jailed ex English Defence League leader should be given a prominent role in Reform.
As all the parties geared up their campaigns for May 1st amid a pan-European populist surge, Musk’s ability to grab the headlines was heavily in evidence. Just a few examples. ‘Musk seeks plan to oust Starmer as prime minister before the next election’ was the Financial Times front page lead on January 10th. Particularly apocalyptic was the Guardian’s January 11th front page featured Health Secretary Wes Streeting arguing Musk’s ‘Grooming gang rhetoric risks inciting massacre’. Musk and Cummings in ‘plot to sabotage UK politics’ was the Mail on Sunday’s January 12th splash. The MoS leader inside, headlined, ‘The last thing we need is meddlers like Musk and Dominic Cummings causing chaos’, wouldn’t have gone amiss in the Guardian or Mirror. The cover of The Observer’s FOCUS section the same day led on, ‘Elon Musk and the new world order’. The inauguration-eve edition of the Mail on Sunday returned to the theme with a front-page combining predictions of ‘Trump’s revenge on Starmer for meddling in US election’, Lord Mandelson being ‘vetoed’ as Washington ambassador and Trump aides ‘plotting to help Farage into No10’. Time alone will tell on those.
A nervy Downing Street certainly wasn’t thanking London Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan for his Observer article linking President Trump’s next day inauguration with the ‘march of fascism’ across the West. The big fear? It could wreck Keir Starmer’s efforts to be the first European leader invited to Washington by the president with a tariff-mitigating trade deal in mind.
Another twist came with a claim in the January 16-22nd edition of The New European that Musk and Boris Johnson are in regular WhatsApp contact and that the former prime minister gifted the ‘two tier Keir’ smear the tycoon deployed frequently against Starmer. My own sources confirm the contact and that Johnson, an inauguration guest, believes Musk and Trump can be wooed away from Farage’s Reform UK and into backing the Conservative party instead (presumably along with a Churchillian comeback Bojo at the helm?). Indeed, the Mail gave front page pride of place to its columnist Boris’s gushing report from the inauguration front line, headlined, ‘As the pulse of power surged from the battered bible into the hand of Donald Trump, I saw the moment the world’s wokerati had worked so hard to prevent’.
How to respond
Certainly, Keir Starmer and Britain’s newspapers, left and right, will spend weeks and years weighing up the implications for the UK of Trump’s various inauguration day speeches with their turbocharged rhetorical rampages across victory, vision, vendetta, vengeance and vanity. The latter exemplified by his ‘Saved by God to Make America Great Again’ boast that gifted an easy headline for several UK papers.
‘New World Order’ — words an estranged former senior Musk executive used in a non-attributable briefing: “That’s the way Elon sees it, the power to re-order the world. He’s a man who thinks solely in terms of missions. Colonising Mars the biggest mission, directing Trump into shaping America the way Elon wants it another, colonising British politics and influencing how Britain is run and who by another. Because of his family origins, he’s developed an obsession with British politics. Having decided he despises Starmer personally and the Labour government in general, he feels entitled to muscle in. To him, backing Farage and Reform are weapons to complete a mission in line with his populist vision of the future. In one sense, he simply regards Farage as a pawn, even a useful idiot, in that powerplay.
“Elon views legacy media, especially newspapers, as dinosaurs, largely destroyed by a social media asteroid. But still relishes it when British papers and politicians react massively to his posts. Whether you’re supporting him or denigrating him in print and on air, he doesn’t care provided you’re not ignoring him. That’s the challenge British journalism is increasingly destined to face. Do you dance to his tune, publicising every intervention, no matter how outrageous or misinformed because he’s the richest and arguably most powerful human on the planet and a key figure in the Trump administration? Or do you take him on, challenge him or simply ignore his crazier outbursts? If any other keyboard warrior than Elon bashed out, ‘America must liberate Britain from its tyrannical government’ garbage, would your newspapers and broadcast channels have given him the oxygen of publicity?”
But how realistic ignoring Musk would be poses the Big Question for the UK’s mainstream media. Stretching way beyond the May 1st local elections right through to the next general election. Not least when some senior GOP politicians now dub the tycoon ‘the real VP’ or even the ‘co-president’.
The Trump 2.0 presidency cowed Meta titan Mark Zuckerberg into sacking his Facebook fact-checkers, a move urged on him by the combined muscle of Trump and Musk. For these super-rich ‘free speech absolutists’, no matter it frees up not just misinformation but the kind of hate speech abuse and death threats Jess Phillips has endured. How Britain’s online harm legislation fares against the power of Musk and co will be one of the biggest, most important political / media stories of the coming months.
Joe Biden’s presidential farewell address constituted a mayday signal too. Without naming Musk, Zuckerberg and their allies, he warned: “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms.” He lamented a “crumbling” free press struggling to counter their rising power. But while Biden’s words were primarily directed at an American audience, let’s not delude ourselves the UK is immune.
Myriad M-words apply to Elon Musk. Mercurial, menacing, machiavellian, mendacious... but there’s another. Momentum. You can imagine both Musk and Trump enjoying the Guardian’s January 13th report that a new poll by FGS Global Radar suggests 52% of Gen Z Brits would prefer an unelected strongman leader to democracy. A wet dream for autocrats?
The election results on May Day will be a political and media barometer of just how momentous or not the Farage / Trump / Musk bully pit brand of populism really is here in Britain.
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
