Elon Musk: How UK politicians can reclaim the narrative

On the same day, in three different cities, the prime minister, first minister and the leader of Scottish Labour all gave set-piece speeches aimed at seizing the political agenda. 

Keir Starmer planned to focus on tackling the NHS backlog in England. John Swinney would position his Scottish Government as one of “hope” and urge rivals to back the budget. Anas Sarwar had prepared messaging about public sector reform under a Labour administration at Holyrood. All three had the headlines in their sights. But those were dominated by billionaire Trump pick Elon Musk, whose interventions in UK domestic discourse have thrown party and government communications into a tailspin. 

With Trump’s inauguration days away, Musk is not yet installed in the US government, in which he is expected to head a department aimed at cutting waste. He also holds no official role in our domestic politics. But it is the X owner who, by flooding his social media platform with posts about race, child abuse and the UK Government, has set the tone for 2025, generating debate in online and offline spaces. How long that will last will depend on the ability of our elected leaders and their professional spinners to tell compelling stories of their own.

But in adopting a Steve Bannon-style ‘flood the zone’ tactic, overwhelming public and media capacity with the sheer volume of his output, Musk has weaponised a decades-old scandal in troubling ways, upsetting the established order and posing new challenges for political leaders.

“It’s disruptive,” says political marketing expert Professor Jennifer Lees-Marshment of the University of Dundee. “It’s almost unprecedented for someone who is not a politician and therefore not bound by the restrictions of being a politician to have such an influence on the public agenda. Every rule is being thrown out.” 

Megaphone diplomacy

“We have had businesspeople trying to do this before,” says the University of Edinburgh’s Dr Fabian Hilfrich, a specialist in US foreign relations and diplomatic history. “What is new is that Musk is a man who bought Twitter to exert influence. At the beginning he wasn’t taken particularly seriously, but he has shown how important that is.

“I don’t think anyone like Musk or Trump will stop this kind of megaphone diplomacy.”

“He’s an attention seeker,” US tech writer Kara Swisher told CNN. “You flood the zone with misinformation and there’s a little bit of real information in there or discontent, people in Britain are worried about this topic, and then you make it a mess, and then you say something so outrageous that people then respond, and then they’re on your agenda and not vice versa.”

Through the $44bn buyout of the platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022, Musk has positioned himself as a free speech advocate who will say the unsaid. Through changes to the algorithms now driving X, he has become one of the loudest voices on the international stage, with posts – some accompanied by community notes correcting his claims – sent out to millions of people, whether they follow him or not. 

As the year turned, Tesla owner Musk, who has flirted with Reform UK, turned his focus to the grooming gangs scandal in which thousands of vulnerable girls were sexually abused by adult men often of Pakistani and Kashmiri origin in English towns, and failed by authorities who often either feared intervention would appear racist or blamed the victims for their own suffering. Reports began emerging in the early 2000s. A seven-year inquiry by Professor Alexis Jay concluded in 2022 and produced 20 recommendations which she presented to the then Conservative-led government. It left office with none of the recommendations implemented.

It is only now, following the furore sparked on social media, that Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced the introduction of a new offence which could see those who cover-up or fail to report child sexual abuse subject to criminal or professional sanctions.

The announcement has not satisfied those now calling for a national statutory public inquiry into the matter – a move Jay has said would delay action being taken. Nor has it assuaged those convinced that Starmer, as a former head of the Crown Prosecution Service for England and Wales, was himself part of a cover-up.

Musk – who previously branded former first minister Humza Yousaf “super racist against white people” – tweeted more than 40 times about the matter in just 24 hours. He has accused Starmer of being “complicit in the rape of Britain” and said safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who in a letter to Oldham councillors rejected a call for a Home Office review of abuse and exploitation cases in the town because she said it was for the local authority to conduct its own review, was a “rape genocide apologist” who “deserves to be in prison”. 

Standing in front of medics in their scrubs, Starmer moved away from his message about reducing NHS waiting times and into denouncing the dissemination of “lies and misinformation” with prepared lines in defence of his government and of Phillips, who, having already experienced stalking and death threats, would tell Newsnight that police considered the risk to her safety had increased. Avoiding all mention of Musk by name, Starmer said opposition MPs were “jumping on a bandwagon” with inquiry calls and “amplifying what the far-right is saying” – words which further stoked the fire as some interpreted them as blanket condemnation of anyone critical of the authorities’ response to the widespread abuse. 

From the continuation of the two-child cap to the decision not to compensate Waspi women and the announcement of higher employers’ National Insurance contributions, the UK Government has repeatedly failed to get in front of potential flashpoints. While pick-up by a US tycoon was perhaps not foreseeable in itself, Starmer’s administration seems to have been unprepared for the backlash to Phillips’ letter.

Things got worse for Labour when viewers of an AI-generated TikTok clip released by the party identified the backing track as a Portuguese-language song with violent lyrics about sex with young girls and having them “addicted” to alcohol and drugs. The content was uncomfortably close to describing abuses perpetrated by grooming gangs. Labour issued an apology and deleted the video from its channel.

Six months into its term, Labour’s communications are playing catch-up more often than setting the pace.

Campaigning is not the same as governing

The best political communication, Lees-Marshment says, is proactive and strategic. “To be successful at controlling the narrative and dominating the agenda, it’s difficult when you’re responding to Elon Musk. 

“Campaigning is not the same as governing. We tell them this,” she says of advice from political marketers to parties. “But they don’t realise it until they get into government and it’s a bit hard. The election happened sooner than expected but they should have been preparing earlier. 

“They spent so long saying the Conservatives were bad, they didn’t have clear policies or priorities before the election. That is part of the reason they are not controlling the narrative. You need to think about delivery before getting into power – deliver something within six months just so you build a reputation for doing something. That buys you trust with voters.”

More generally, “Covid disrupted a lot of strategic capacity in all organisations, and on top of that you had Brexit which made everything really messy, then you had this election called early,” Lees-Marshment says. “We have had unprecedented challenge and crisis which has limited or reduced the capacity for strategic and proactive thinking – and it was never that great anyway.”

While the grooming gangs debate has been centred south of the border, Tory MSP Pam Gosal warned Scotland is not “immune to this problem”, backing calls by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch for a national inquiry. A bid to force this was voted down in Westminster the day before it emerged that five members of a Romanian grooming gang had been convicted of raping and sexually abusing women aged 16-30 in Dundee. Police investigating the trafficking of women from eastern Europe for the sex trade discovered local women were being given drugs and other ‘gifts’ by the gang, who were convicted at the High Court in Glasgow.

Gosal told the Scottish Parliament she wanted “to shed a light on this issue as a whole, rather than leaving it to people like Elon Musk”. Responding, children’s minister Natalie Don-Innes said the independent Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, which is ongoing, will “identify any systemic failures” that allowed abuses to be carried out against children in care. “The Scottish Government will carefully consider any recommendations made by the inquiry to improve the protection of children in Scotland,” the minister said. And she told MSPs that a child sexual abuse and exploitation national strategic group involving Professor Jay had been established in October. However, Holyrood understands that this group has already lost both of its co-chairs – one a police officer and the other the deputy chief social worker to the Scottish Government who was on secondment – and has not yet defined a remit, strategic direction, or addressed the issue of child sexual exploitation.

At First Minister’s Questions, Swinney said his administration was “considering” the UK Government’s plan for mandatory reporting. “I want to be very clear that in Scotland today, professionals already have a professional duty to report child abuse,” he said.

At the start of the week, Swinney had not only called Musk’s remarks about Phillips “completely and utterly reprehensible”, but he had dismissed the tycoon – a supporter of jailed far-right figurehead Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson – as offering “glib solutions” to social ills.

Swinney presented the tech billionaire as something of a bogeyman in a warning to opposition MSPs, saying that the consequences of any rejection of his government’s budget would be “playing right into the hands of Elon Musk and to other populists”. “We’re playing right into their hands because we’re demonstrating, or the political system is demonstrating, that it can’t address people’s concerns,” the FM said in a claim rejected by rival parties. Labour’s Anas Sarwar said Swinney should stop “shadow boxing”, and while Green finance spokesperson Ross Greer cautioned against the “dangerous, billionaire-led forces of the radical right”, he called the SNP leader’s message “daft and divisive”.

“Let’s not exaggerate,” says Hilfrich of Swinney’s framing of an anti-politics threat over the budget. “For the most part, Musk is someone who is going ballistic on X. We have got to watch out that we don’t amplify what is going on.” He points to a row in Germany over the publication by respected newspaper Welt am Sonntag of a guest editorial by Musk in which he urged voters to support the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in upcoming elections. The paper had “lent legitimacy” to Musk in a way that has so far been denied in the UK media, he argues. Hilfrich also suggests Musk’s denunciation of Nigel Farage shows his engagement in UK politics “should be taken with a grain of salt”. 

Just weeks after speculation that he would donate to Reform UK, Musk has said Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” to be its leader, something the MP has suggested is linked to his refusal to share Musk’s support for Yaxley-Lennon. 

If there is a danger of amplifying the reach of Musk’s messaging by discussing it, how should parties act? Hilfrich points to the Conservatives, who only after leaving office are now suddenly pursuing a national inquiry. Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has used the debate to hit out at “alien cultures” and “mass migration”. “The Conservatives are trying to change the narrative,” says Hilfrich. “The only answer [for Labour] is not to be drawn and pushed by these attempts and emphasise that they think this inquiry should be carried out locally. But that’s not without risk. There will be lots of people who will pick up on this and say, ‘that does seem to be a scandal’.”

Lees-Marshment also argues against meeting like with like. “Somebody will always shout louder,” she says, and “all the research suggests people just shut off” when overloaded with messaging. “We’re information-poor because we have too many things coming at us,” she says. “You have to cut through that by being relevant to where people are at. You also need to offer them solutions and deliver on them.”

Choosing to focus on quangos, as Sarwar did in his more “intellectual” speech, fails to do that, Lees-Marshment says, as does the UK Government’s announcement of a review of social care in England. “There’s lots of talking about doing things. People want action,” she says. 

“If all the politicians are talking about Elon Musk, they’re not talking about what Scottish voters are thinking about. It will move us away from ordinary experiences, health, work and housing.
“Things are going quite badly out at ordinary voter level. That makes things very volatile, and parties are finding it difficult to remain in tune with the public. If voters have no hope that any party can solve things, they are more willing to look at other places.”