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IT’S GREAT FUN being a billionaire in America. While the rest of us rely on television or video games to unwind in the evening, Elon Musk has taken to interfering in Western democracies for sport.
A real life comic book character, he’s become the answer to the question – what would Tony Stark be like if he grew up in apartheid South Africa and took ketamine? It’s not a pretty sight.
After turning Twitter into his personal fiefdom and linking arms with Donald Trump on his march towards the Presidency, Musk started looking around for his next great wheeze. Much to the delight of men who live in their mother’s basements everywhere, he decided to try to topple the UK government.
His vendetta against Keir Starmer started sometime last year when he shared an online petition calling for another general election. The petition – which was started by a pub landlord in Shropshire who typed the words ‘how to change the Prime Minister’ into Google – ended up with millions of signatures.
Since then, he’s become fixated on the groups of men – primarily of Pakistani descent – who groomed and raped mainly young white women in towns and cities around Britain. Far-right conspiracy theories allege there’s been a cover-up. This line has been parroted by Musk in a series of wild posts on X, accusing the Prime Minister of being ‘complicit’ in the rape of Britain and even calling Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, ‘a rape genocide apologist’.
The sexual exploitation of children by grooming gangs has been covered on the front pages of newspapers, television dramas and social media for over a decade now. There have been hundreds of arrests with multiple convictions, while many investigations are still ongoing.
Yet, Musk believes that the world needs him to wade in and shine a light on the scandal. He apparently only stumbled upon the story while doom strolling over Christmas, like a horse tranquilliser-addled Grinch.
The tycoon reportedly thinks that the fate of Western civilisation is at stake, so he’s been speaking to allies about how to destabilise the Labour Party and back an alternative right-wing movement in the UK. Smelling blood in the water, the Tories have weighed in behind him. Leader Kemi Badenoch has regurgitated the accusations in parliament, for which Musk has called her ‘brave and true’. The pair are either unaware or wilfully ignoring the fact that the previous Conservative government already had an inquiry but took no concrete action on the findings.
Badenoch, in case you missed it, is Rishi Sunak’s replacement. Her party were told to ‘be more normal’ if they wanted to find a path back to power, but under her leadership they’ve doubled down on being balls-to-the-wall weird. This is a woman who claimed that while she comes from a middle-class family, as a teenager she worked in McDonald’s therefore ‘became working class’. Like the time I ate a Ferraro Rocher and became an Italian aristocrat.
Spare a thought for Nigel Farage, who must be feeling a little jilted by Badenoch’s budding love affair with the world’s richest man. There had been rumours that Musk was looking at a massive $100 million donation to Reform UK. But Musk has since posted that the party needs a new leader and that ‘Farage doesn’t have what it takes’. Ouch.
They seem to have fallen out over the South African mogul’s support for Tommy Robinson, the football hooligan turned far-right activist who is currently in jail for contempt of court. Spineless in the face of Musk’s wealth and influence, Farage is still planning to attend Trump’s inauguration, having no doubt already spent a small fortune on fake tan for the occasion. Lizard tangerine is the colour he’s been going for lately.
The Tesla owner’s dramatic meddling in British politics couldn’t come at a worse time for Starmer. His approval ratings were already at Liz Truss levels. He wasn’t straight with people during the election campaign about the painful fiscal decisions Labour would need to take in office. The government have so far picked fights with pensioners, farmers and Waspi women, with more battles still to come.
Whoever ends up being Labour’s main opponent in the next election, it should not be this easy for foreign billionaires to distract, influence and manipulate our public officials. Here on planet Earth, people are still struggling with the cost of living, housing and healthcare. We need our politicians to be focused on the issues that matter most to us, not the erratic whims of a megalomaniac desperate to find meaning in his life.
Peter Flanagan is an Irish comedian and writer. You can find him on Twitter @peterflanagan and Instagram @peterflanagancomedy.
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