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Keir Starmer has condemned Elon Musk’s increasingly erratic attacks on the government, suggesting that his “lies and misinformation” on grooming gangs were amplifying the “poison” of the far right.
The prime minister angrily criticised Tory politicians for “jumping on the bandwagon” by calling for a national inquiry into the scandal when they failed to implement any of the recommendations of a major report while in power. He accused them of being more interested in themselves than supporting victims.
Ministers promised on Monday to introduce a key demand of Prof Alexis Jay’s 2022 child sex abuse inquiry so that professionals who work with children will face sanction if they fail to report claims of sexual abuse under a law to be introduced this year.
Starmer, the target of wild criticism from Musk on his social media platform X, said the debate on the issue had crossed a line with threats against MPs including the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, who the billionaire called a “rape genocide apologist” and demanded should be jailed.
Musk has claimed Starmer is “complicit in the rape of Britain”. Responding to his comments on Monday, the billionaire described the prime minister as “utterly despicable” and said he was “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes”.
Starmer’s condemnation was part of a growing chorus of European criticism of Musk, including from the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who accused the world’s richest man of intervening directly in the continent’s democratic processes.
Some in the UK government had urged caution amid concerns over the destabilising role that Musk, a close ally of Donald Trump who has been asked to become a special adviser to the incoming US president, could potentially play in transatlantic relations.
Starmer, however, unleashed his ire on Musk – who has endorsed the far-right activist Tommy Robinson – and Tory politicians in his first public appearance of the new year, a speech in south-east England on the future of the NHS.
“Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible, they’re not interested in victims. They’re interested in themselves,” he told reporters.
“I enjoy the cut and thrust of politics, the robust debate that we must have, but that’s got to be based on facts and truth, not on lies, not on those who are so desperate for attention that they’re prepared to debase themselves and their country.
“What I won’t tolerate is politicians jumping on the bandwagon simply to get attention, when those politicians sat in government for 14 long years – tweeting, talking, but not doing anything about it – now so desperate for attention that they’re amplifying what the far right is saying.”
The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, accused Starmer of smearing people who were concerned about grooming gangs. “That such a huge scandal could occur should prompt soul-searching not ranting that those of us who care about it are ‘the far right’,” she said.
She attempted to exert pressure on the government by announcing that the Tories would try to amend the children’s wellbeing bill this week to require another national inquiry into grooming gangs.
Jay, who chaired the independent inquiry into child sex abuse, distanced herself from calls for a new national inquiry, saying it was critical that her own recommendations were fully implemented.
Starmer indicated that he was “not closing my mind” on further action, but admitted that he was frustrated by calls for another review when it was action that was now needed. His spokesperson, however, would not put a deadline on when this might happen.
The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, told MPs that the introduction of mandatory reporting in England and Wales would be included in the crime and policing bill, which is expected to be introduced to parliament in the spring.
The inquiry had called for a new criminal offence after it heard evidence that some professionals in a position of trust – including teachers, doctors, priests and social workers – had failed to act on young people’s claims of abuse or further investigate their colleagues’ suspicions.
The Tories were supposed to have introduced similar plans last year as part of the criminal justice bill but campaigners and lawyers criticised them heavily as being watered down.
Cooper also disclosed that the government planned to introduce a victims and survivors panel to oversee reforms, make grooming an aggravating factor in child sexual offences and establish a core dataset for child abuse and protection.
In a sharp attack upon the previous government’s record, she said: “This measure is something I first called for in response to the reports and failings in Rotherham 10 years ago. It’s something that the prime minister first called for 12 years ago based on his experience as director of public prosecutions, and the case was clear then. But we’ve lost a decade, and we need to get on with it now.”
Starmer defended his record as a former director of public prosecutions, a role he held for five years from 2008, after Musk accused him of being “complicit in the rape of Britain” for failing to tackle grooming gangs during his tenure, even though he in fact took a tougher approach.
“For many, many years, too many victims have been completely let down by perverse ideas about community relations, or by the idea that institutions must be protected above all else, and they’ve not been listened to, and they’ve not been heard,” he said.
“I changed the whole prosecution approach, because I wanted to challenge the myths and stereotypes that were stopping those victims being hurt. So we changed the entire approach, not without criticism at the time, I might add, but when I left office, we had the highest number of child sexual abuse cases being prosecuted on record.”
He also expressed his support for Jess Phillips, who he said had done “1,000 times more than they’ve even dreamt about” during her career to protect victims of sexual abuse.
“We’ve seen this playbook many times, whipping up of intimidation and threats of violence, hoping that the media will amplify it,” he said. A 39-year-old man, Jack Bennett, from Devon, has been charged with sending malicious communications to the safeguarding minister.
Musk’s latest attacks on the UK government come after he called for Nigel Farage to be replaced as the leader of Reform UK, just hours after the rightwing politician had described the billionaire as a hero, in a preview of how a chaotic Trump administration could affect British politics.
