Elon Musk has reversed his support for Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom’s populist party Reform UK, after a disagreement over the tech billionaire’s call for the release of a jailed far-right activist.
Musk said on Sunday that Reform UK should change its leader after Farage distanced himself from anti-Islam campaigner Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson.
“The Reform Party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes,” Musk posted on his social media site X.
Musk last week wrongly claimed that Yaxley-Lennon, who is serving an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court, had been jailed for “telling the truth” about a child grooming scandal that rocked the UK during the 2010s.
Yaxley-Lennon received the sentence after admitting to breaching an injunction against repeating false allegations about a Syrian refugee schoolboy who successfully sued him for libel.
Asked about Musk’s support for Yaxley-Lennon on Friday, Farage said the activist had been jailed for contempt of court, not for speaking out against grooming gangs.
“We’re a political party aiming to win the next general election. [Yaxley-Lennon] is not what we need,” Farage told GB News.
Musk’s broadside against Farage comes after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO publicly backed Reform UK, saying it was the only party that could “save Britain”.
Farage last month told the BBC that Reform UK was in “open negotiations” with Musk about him donating to the party.
Responding to Musk on Sunday, Farage said the billionaire’s remarks were a “surprise” but he would not change his position.
“Well, this is a surprise! Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree,” he said on X.
“My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I never sell out my principles.”
Musk, who has been repeatedly ranked as the world’s richest man, has weighed into politics in different countries with increasing frequency since coming out in support of US President-elect Donald Trump during his re-election campaign.
On Thursday, he claimed UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer had failed to bring grooming gangs to justice when he was director of public prosecutions and should face “charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain”.
UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Musk’s views on the issue were “misjudged and certainly misinformed”.
A 2014 inquiry found at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham, northern England, between 1997 and 2013.
The report by academic Alexis Jay found that authorities in the town had repeatedly failed to act on allegations on abuse, with some council staff expressing “nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist”.
The perpetrators in the Rotherham case were overwhelmingly described by their victims as being South Asian, although a 2020 study commissioned by the Home Office found that most offenders in cases of group-based child sexual exploitation are white.
Musk, who is set to co-lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in the incoming Trump administration, last month backed the anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany, which the German security services have classified as a suspected extremist organisation.