Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain on Monday fired again at Elon Musk after days of inflammatory social media posts by Mr. Musk, the billionaire proprietor of X, not directly accusing him and others of “spreading lies and misinformation” about victims of kid intercourse abuse gangs.
“Those that are spreading lies and misinformation, as far and as broad as attainable, aren’t curious about victims,” Mr. Starmer advised reporters at an occasion south of London devoted to repairing the Nationwide Well being Service. “They’re curious about themselves.”
Mr. Starmer additionally defended himself towards accusations by Mr. Musk that he didn’t act shortly sufficient towards gangs that abused and exploited younger women, when he was head of public prosecutions. An estimated 1,400 girls were exploited in the northern town of Rotherham by “grooming gangs” made up largely of British Pakistani males in instances that date again to earlier than 2010. Related gangs have been additionally discovered to be working in different cities and cities in England, together with Oldham and Telford.
The prime minister famous that when he was director of the Crown Prosecution Service, between 2008 and 2013, his workplace introduced the primary case towards an Asian grooming gang and drafted new pointers for the obligatory reporting of kid intercourse offenses. He had tackled the scandal “head on,” he mentioned.
“There’s nothing secret about being director of public prosecutions,” Mr. Starmer mentioned. “Each single case I prosecuted went to courtroom, was checked out by a choose.”
Mr. Musk has repeatedly asserted, with out proof, that Mr. Starmer had lined up the abuses. He additionally claimed that Jess Phillips, the Labour authorities’s beneath secretary for safeguarding and violence towards girls and women, was a “rape genocide apologist” as a result of she pushed again on requires a nationwide inquiry into little one sexual exploitation in Oldham, a city close to Manchester.
Ms. Phillips, who has lengthy campaigned for girls’s rights, had as an alternative known as for an area investigation to be run by Oldham’s native authorities, reasonably than the central authorities.
Mr. Starmer staunchly defended Ms. Phillips. “These attacking Jess Phillips aren’t defending victims,” he mentioned. “Phillips has finished a thousand instances greater than they’ve even dreamt about in terms of defending victims of sexual abuse.”
The web accusations “crossed a line,” Mr. Starmer mentioned, including, “As soon as we lose the anchor that reality issues, within the sturdy debate that we will need to have, then we’re on a really slippery slope.”
Whereas Mr. Starmer’s tone was sturdy, he prevented commenting on Mr. Musk’s broader motives in attacking Britain. Mr. Musk is a detailed ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, with whom Mr. Starmer has tried to cultivate ties.
As a substitute, the prime minister criticized British politicians, together with Kemi Badenoch, the chief of the opposition Conservative Occasion, as in search of to use the divisions created by Mr. Musk’s posts.
Ms. Badenoch on Thursday called for a nationwide public inquiry into what she known as “the rape gangs scandal.” It has already been the topic of local and national inquiries relationship again to 2014, and a national inquiry into the broader drawback of kid sexual abuse concluded in 2022 after 325 days of public hearings.
“When politicians — and I imply politicians who sat in authorities for a few years — are informal about honesty, decency, reality and the rule of regulation,” Mr. Starmer mentioned, “calling for inquiries as a result of they need to leap on a bandwagon of the far proper, that impacts politics, as a result of a sturdy debate can solely be based mostly on the true information.”
Earlier on Monday morning, Mr. Musk wrote “Jail for Starmer” in a single submit on X, and in one other, which he pinned to the highest of his profile, he invited his 210 million followers to vote on the statement: “America ought to liberate the folks of Britain from their tyrannical authorities.”
