On Labour’s Elon Musk problem, Richard and Oscar nailed it long ago. The famous Rodgers and Hammerstein song asks, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” and basically concludes that you can’t. The word “darling” pulls one up, but otherwise, with a fashionable change of gender and apologies to Julie Andrews: “He’s as flighty as a feather/He’s a darling, he’s a demon, he’s a lamb/He’d out-pester any pest/Drive a hornet from its nest/… throw a whirling dervish out of whirl.”
The songwriters have their Austrian nuns conclude that their errant sister is a “problem” for which there is no solution. So it is for Elon Musk, lately exploiting the Rotherham grooming gangs scandal by accusing the Prime Minister of “raping” Britain, calling for the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, to be imprisoned, and suggesting that King Charles dissolve parliament and call an immediate election.
Elon Musk is the world’s richest man, worth around £339bn – vastly more than the National Health Service and British defence budgets combined. I think it’s safe to say he cannot be bribed. With his rockets and satellite systems, close friendship with Donald Trump and reputation as the greatest industrialist of our times, he obviously can’t be threatened. Musk, moreover, is a flighty, and a born provocateur – as Nigel Farage can now testify. Musk loves the limelight so much, he actually bought the limelight (now known as X) for £35bn. He has a short attention span but apparently limitless time for posting, largely to annoy people. If the British government got into a tweet-off with him then I think we all know who would win.
So, Keir Starmer’s instinctive response, which is not to play his game or give him any more limelight – but to answer him with calm refutation and otherwise, in Ernie Bevin’s deathless phrase, a “complete ignoral” – is the right tactic. Some problems cannot be resolved. They must be endured. But this is not an argument for silence more generally. Exactly the opposite.
One of the most curious political phenomena of recent months is the government’s apparent inability to argue vigorously or passionately on its own behalf – a strange backing away from the very arguments from its enemies it most needs to refute. And these are mostly about priorities – who a social democratic government should be for. Take the Waspi women compensation decision. Britain suffers from grotesque intergenerational unfairness: where were the ministers vehemently asking why, at a time of limited resources, so much money should go, again, on boomers, rather than the young? Make that argument clearly and as if you believe it, and most of voters of any age would go along.
Or look at the ferocious response of business to the Budget’s increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions. A confident social democratic administration would have come out punching, asking the electorate whether they wish to continue for a further five years with crumbling schools, lengthening NHS waiting list, a collapsing court and judicial system, a hollowed-out army? And if the answer, given at the general election, was still “no”, it would have gone on to say: well then, where do you think the money should be coming from? Or, when the farmers came to Westminster with the big loud tractors, you might have expected a Labour Party that approved of the inheritance-tax choices not to leave the field entirely open to Nigel Farage and Jeremy Clarkson… which is what, broadly speaking, happened.
There are other examples. It is almost as if the government has, at some deep level, lost confidence in itself and in its own arguments. Yes, it faces a transformed media environment, even more tilted to the right than before, and, on social media, more bitterly personal and vituperative than any I can remember – but this fatal reticence goes a long way to explaining its opinion poll ratings.
What lies behind this failure of nerve? Perhaps it is the demoralising and jolting effect of that early row about clothing and entertainment expenses. (“Are we the good guys after all?”) Perhaps it is the similarly big jolt of the winter fuel allowance decision – one case, I’m afraid, where a better, more pugnacious argument would not have helped. Again, the loss of moral high ground may prove the biggest longer-term consequence.
Maybe this is just the result of a party so long in opposition, used to the comparative luxury of finger-pointing, and psychologically unready for outside challenge. Perhaps, finally, there is some complacency because Keir Starmer has been so effective against Kemi Badenoch in the Commons, in jousts most of the country never sees. But the “why” matters less than the “what”. A handful of ministers do come across as proper fighters in their own cause. Wes Streeting comes out swinging – and defending colleagues – mostly very effectively. Ed Miliband, too, on the rare occasions he is allowed out, makes a proper political argument. But where are the rest of the top team?
Now Elon Musk pops out as Labour’s unlikely saviour. He would hate the thought, but in the extremism of his language, at least he reminds ministers that their fight is real, and is currently being lost. And now, by turning on his former friend Nigel Farage, who – according to Musk’s X post on 5 January – apparently “doesn’t have what it takes”, Musk has no real horse in the race of British politics.
Indeed, the threat and disruptive effect of Musk’s interventions have been more felt by the Conservative right than the Labour government. Badenoch tried to mimic Musk on the grooming gangs scandal. Now her never-give-up rival Robert Jenrick has gone a lot further, tweeting at the weekend that, “To sustain order in multicultural Britain, the state considered it necessary to apply the law selectively. For decades the most appalling crimes from predominantly British-Pakistani men were legalised and actively covered up to prevent disorder. The rule of law was abandoned to sustain the myth that diversity is our strength.” He went on to talk about the alien cultures of mass immigration and called for unnamed officials to be jailed.
This sounded politically panicky and takes him a long way towards a complete rejection of multiculturalism, which then leads to arguments about deportation, and to full-scale community conflict. Whenever we hear a political argument, we must always ask where it leads. Farage, by comparison, has been careful in his language – perhaps that is why Musk turned against him. Tommy Robinson would no doubt agree with Jenrick – but how does middle-of-the-road Conservative England feel about this kind of language?
We will find out in May when the English local elections offer their verdict on the fight between Tories and Reformers. Because of the electoral cycle, most seats are being defended by Conservatives, and if Reform comes in second place, as it would hope, it must gain some 500 seats, mostly at the expense of Tories. That would, in turn, give Badenoch’s party the biggest loss of any opposition party in local elections in 50 years, a worse defeat than Labour under Corbyn. And if Reform falls well short, that is a bubble burst.
However, Labour cannot afford to sit back and observe what will be a fight to the death on the right. It can, it should, dodge passing arguments with the increasingly erratic Musk. Starmer’s best play is to silently bypass him by offering Trump something he wants, probably higher defence spending. But Labour cannot dodge the arguments about the nature of British society today. It needs to defend our varied and – away from politics – still remarkably tolerant society, just as it must defend the basics of social democracy. The other way is hell. And you can never win an argument by failing to engage in it.
[See also: Why is Elon Musk tweeting about Britain’s grooming gangs?]
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This article appears in the 08 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Great Power Gap