US billionaire Elon Musk slammed Britain’s premier Keir Starmer as “utterly despicable” in a controversial row over child rape crimes in England.
Musk struck out at the Prime Minister on X, writing, “Starmer repeatedly ignored the pleas of vast numbers of little girls and their parents in order to secure political support. Starmer is utterly despicable.”
Keir Starmer advocated for his work as Britain’s top prosecutor on Monday, refusing to mention U.S. Elon Musk by name but addressing Musk’s criticism that, long before he became prime minister, he was unsuccessful in prosecuting gangs who sexually abused girls.
Musk, an ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, posted messages on his social media account X, accusing Starmer of what he said was a failure to prosecute gangs of men, mostly of South Asian background, who raped young girls when he was director of public prosecutions.
Starmer denied addressing some of Musk’s posts on X, including a poll questioning whether the United States should free the UK from its “tyrannical government,” but he guarded his record as Director of Public Prosecutions, saying he had overcome resistance to handling the acquisitions by reopening cases.
“When I was chief prosecutor for five years, I managed head-on, and that’s why I reopened cases that had been closed and supposedly finished. I brought the first major prosecution of an Asian grooming gang … I changed the whole prosecution approach,” he said in a press conference.
Starmer avoided questions on Musk’s increasingly critical comments on his premiership, he said, “did not want to get involved in a public slanging match with someone who could influence Trump’s thinking on relations with Britain”.
