Elon Musk might be a narcissist but he proved something that should worry us all. (Image: Getty)
A few days ago I pondered penning a piece on how we should all studiously avoid, shun and ignore the intergalactic scale narcissist that is .
That the rocket-obsessed (and I think Sigmund Freud could have a field day with that) billionaire and his deranged Brit-hating rantings were of absolutely zero consequence was going to be my contention… and, just like you do with a child, if we all ignored his incessant whining it would stop.
But I’m now glad I didn’t, as it turns out Elon has just dictated his first piece of British Government policy. Perhaps, in our world which is irretrievably wedded to social media slavery, it will be the first of many.
I refer of course to the Labour Government’s embarrassing backtracking over the need for a child grooming inquiry.
On Wednesday at Prime Minister’s Questions rubbished calls for a public inquiry and accused his opposite number Kemi Badenoch of “jumping on a bandwagon.”
And maybe she was. But make no mistake it was a bandwagon set on motion by .
Musk set this blaze alight with his repeated accusations on X (which even though it was rebranded in July 2023 I am obliged to add “formerly known as Twitter) that this Government was covering-up and playing down the organised, industrial-scale, rape of tens of thousands of working class white girls.
Let’s just remind ourselves of what he said.
On New Year’s Day Musk attacked Jess Phillips, the UK’s safeguarding minister, for blocking a full public inquiry. He said: “So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this.”
Two days later he weighed in with an even more damning, if factually sketchy: “Starmer was complicit in the rape of Britain when he was head of Crown Prosecution for six years. Starmer must go and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain.”
I have no wish to denigrate or disparage the valiant efforts of the girls hideously abused by the grooming gangs, or their families and representatives. But, let’s be honest, it took a big-mouthed American tech billionaire to put calls for an inquiry on the nation’s agenda.
And now there is one. Five actually.
Which is all kinds of terrifying.
Only yesterday President used his farewell address to warn about an “oligarchy” of the ultra-wealthy taking root in the USA and the “tech-industrial complex” battering Americans’ rights and the future of democracy.
Turns out he may as well have included Britain.
Admittedly the inquiry is classic underwhelming muddled Labour fare which satisfies no-one.
Instead of a national public inquiry, with the power to compel witnesses to attend, and a brief to look at the state of child sexual abuse at the hands of grooming gangs across the country (and yes, the ethnicities of the perpetrators) we are having five mini-reports.
They will be little more than academic exercises, detached, disjointed and abstract.
When politicians really need to show a pair, as in this case, you can safely put your on them spinelessly letting you down and doing exactly the wrong thing.
The weird thing is I think the MPs know Starmer was making the wrong call all along. You could see it in Jess Phillips’s face at Prime Minister’s Questions – she had the haunted look of a Lady Macbeth. And you could hear it in Lisa Nandy’s voice on the wireless this morning as she tried to defend the initial blocking, then the backtrack, then the muddled fudge announced by Yvette Cooper yesterday.
She sounded like a woman trying to convince no-one quite as much as herself.
But amid the unrelenting grimness there was one moment that made me laugh.
“We are a Government who will not rule by social media,” she blustered to the ’s Nick Robinson.
And I’m sure if you pop by later you’ll see that on her Twitter feed.
Either hers or Elon Musks…