One of the Tories’ most senior shadow cabinet ministers has pleaded for to reconsider donating to and instead take a look at Kemi Badenoch.
Amid fears the US tech billionaire is considering a $100 million donation to Reform UK in order to upend the British political establishment, shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith suggested the could be just as much up his street.
Speaking on Sky News, the top Tory said: “What I would say to Elon is: he’s been campaigning a lot about freedom of speech.
“He talks a lot about the ‘woke mind virus’, this whole thing that he thinks is infecting the world.
“And I’d say, look, look at the Conservative party. Look at what Kemi Badenoch did in government on things like the gender agenda, protecting children from the Tavistock Clinic, when it was who got debanked by NatWest.
:
Mr Farage could be on course for a major donation from Mr Musk (Image: Nigel Farage X)
“It wasn’t Reform, it was people like Toby Young and myself that were standing up and fighting that battle.
“So there’s only one real official opposition party in the UK. There’s only one party that’s daily taking the fight to this socialist government, and that’s the .”
His attempted wooing came after Ms Badenoch herself used a speech to a conservative think tank in Washington DC to praise Mr Musk’s planned project to improve government efficiency in America.
She told the assembled crowd: “I am excited about DOGE and what President-Elect Trump and will do on government efficiency.
“The best governments do a few things well, not many things badly… we need to make the case for leaner government.”
Don’t miss…
Tory Andrew Griffith said Mr Musk should look at the Tories instead (Image: Sky News)
Reform once again sparked terror in Westminster after Mr Farage and the party’s new treasurer Nick Candy were photographed with the X owner in Florida earlier this week.
However the establishment is now pushing to change political donation rules in order to ban Mr Musk from giving the huge sum to the insurgent right-wing party.
Blairite think tank the IPPR has now recommended introducing a new annual cap on political donations from any one individual donor of £100,000.
Interim director Harry Quilter-Pinner said his proposals would help reverse the “Americanisation” of British politics.
He told the Today programme: “What we have seen since 2000 is a doubling of the amount of money coming into British political parties and more concerning still than the quantum has been the rise in the concentration.
“So we have had a huge increase in what we call mega-donors, so that is donors giving more than £1 million to one party in one year and before 2017 we had never seen more than 10 million pounds worth of mega donations to a party in a year, since that year we have breached it four times – three times for the , once to Labour.
“So we are seeing this Americanisation of British politics as more money flows in.”
Mr Farage this week accused the Electoral Commission of being “establishment stooges” after the quango urged Labour to tighten donation rules to “protect the electoral system from foreign interference”.
A furious Reform UK leader blasted on Twitter: “Once again the Electoral Commission prove themselves to be establishment stooges. Both Labour and the are now terrified of Reform and .
“Never mind peerages for donations or the millions given to them by foreign businessmen via UK companies in the past. This old order needs to be swept away.”