Debate: Should UK government be stronger on Musk?

The British prime minister was forced to fight back against the incessant attacks from Elon Musk – distracting from a major speech designed to get his government back on course.

We spoke to Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future thinktank, and Tim Montgomerie, a political activist who founded the ConservativeHome website, but quit the Tories last month to join Reform UK.

Cathy Newman: Should the government actually be even more robust than Keir Starmer was today? Going after Elon Musk for hate speech or even libel perhaps?

Sunder Katwala: I don’t think getting involved in a libel case would be important. There was a dilemma about whether to respond at all. So obviously don’t feed the trolls, even if they’re billionaires. The government’s hoping for a normal relationship with the Trump administration, which might be wishful thinking, but they’ve got to try. So they didn’t want to amplify what Elon Musk was doing. They then had to respond because of the nature of the language used, particularly about Jess Phillips and that kind of language, which Musk might think it’s cartoonish knockabout, but there are dangers to MPs and ministers when people use that language.

Cathy Newman: Is it hate speech in fact?

Sunder Katwala: It’s probably not in law, hate speech. What it is – it’s socialising and inciting violence. I’ll give you an example on Twitter today, Musk said Starmer was complicit and other people were saying ‘bring out the guillotines, when are the riots happening?’ So you’ve got the owner of the platform not policing the platform, but actually inciting the encouragement to violence on the platform.

Cathy Newman: Tim Montgomerie, are the Conservatives and Reform MPs stoking this toxic and sort of hateful atmosphere?

Tim Montgomerie: I don’t think so. And certainly the Conservative Party and other Reform people have criticised what Elon Musk has said in various ways.

Cathy Newman: Very mildly though.

Tim Montgomerie: Well, I don’t know. I think they have criticised them. Look, I think the sort of rhetoric that Elon Musk has used about Jess Phillips in particular… In the last decade, we’ve had two MPs murdered in our country. Now, a lot of MPs feel very unsafe. So what Elon Musk has said about her in particular was indefensible. There are other aspects of what he said that’s indefensible. But this is my first day back at work today. The last few days, I’ve still been on holiday.

Cathy Newman: Welcome back.

Tim Montgomerie: Thank you, talking to friends and that…and the overwhelming sense of talking to ordinary people, if you like, is they think – they don’t defend what Elon Musk has said. The reasonable person knows that he’s gone over the top. But there’s a lot of gratitude almost for the fact that this issue, which is – this is one of the most heinous crimes. We should call them rape gangs. They weren’t grooming gangs, they were rape gangs. Thousands of young people in this country were raped by these gangs. And this issue has been on the national agenda for a long time. But the impetus to do something, the impetus to make – to implement – the recommendations that have come out of various reports, the impetus to implement these things fully hasn’t been there. I think one of the benefits of this, despite the commotion – and your right to focus on the abuses, the excesses – but at least this is now being talked about at the top of the national conversation.

Cathy Newman: Isn’t Labour and particularly Keir Starmer vulnerable on this whole issue of grooming gangs? I mean the last Labour government is accused of presiding over a sort of culture of political correctness, which meant that the people were not tackled.

Sunder Katwala: I think one of the reasons Keir Starmer was keen – he did respond – is he’s actually got some pride in his own record leading the Crown Prosecution Service. There’s no doubt we were too slow to believe victims and to prosecute, but he was part of the change that started to get the gangs prosecuted. That’s a different question from…

Cathy Newman: Do you accept that Tim?

Tim Montgomerie: I do.

Sunder Katwala: That’s a different question from what does this Labour government do now to implement the findings of the inquiry? What did the last Labour government do nationally or in local councils? Grooming was introduced as an offence in 2003 because of the brave activities of quite a lone Labour MP – Ann Cryer – who put grooming on the agenda.

Cathy Newman: She received a lot of pushback from her own party.

Sunder Katwala: Yeah, there was political correctness there about, you know, will this be divisive? That’s a stereotype of Asian communities and ethnic minority communities, you’re almost saying it is a cultural norm. There was also a lot of political incorrectness, a lot of misogyny, sexism, not believing girls who are too young to consent because they might have consented. So there’s no simple course to this. But we need to have inquiries. We’ve had inquiries. We now need action on what we can do.

Cathy Newman: Yeah, you don’t need another inquiry. And the risk is that you and others are politicising child sexual abuse.

Tim Montgomerie: I don’t think so. I think… I certainly don’t…Sunder and I agree on too much. But we do not need another inquiry. We know it will take a lot of time, a lot of money. What needs to happen is that…

Cathy Newman: But your leader is calling for another inquiry.

Tim Montgomerie: I didn’t agree with everything my Conservative leader said and I don’t agree with everything my Reform leader says. What is the anger, though, out there, is that we have all these recommendations, but no police officer, no social worker, no local council leader who covered up this or, you know, turned a blind eye… It’s the prosecution of those people. So we don’t need more recommendations. What we need is for people in the system, who turned a blind eye or were somehow complicit in this, to be prosecuted. That’s the real change that will change behaviour in the system.

Cathy Newman: The Tories and Reform are tapping into legitimate public concerns about this. Do you accept that?

Sunder Katwala: I think there’s anger about grooming, why it happened, how it happened. There’s a lot of confusion about it. I think we should be talking about cultural factors… My background happens to be Irish Catholic. Were there cultural factors in the Irish Catholic Church in the way it covered up? Yes of course there was. We find that easy to say. We shouldn’t find it difficult to say there are cultural factors in subcultures in Pakistani communities. We don’t then say all British Pakistanis are part of that. We don’t say all of the gangs are Pakistani because there are white British gangs in the West Midlands and in Scotland. So we should all be more robust, to police the law without fear or favour, whoever breaks it.

Cathy Newman: Tim, Reform’s been courting Musk for cash. Are you still keen, even though he’s now gone off your leader, apparently?

Tim Montgomerie: Less keen than I was. I think Elon Musk is a brilliant man. He is the Da Vinci of our age in many ways. Look at Tesla, look at Space X, look at Twitter. But you can’t tweet 20 times in an hour on different subjects and know what you’re talking about all the time. He’s clearly…

Cathy Newman: Who is he being advised by do you reckon?

Tim Montgomerie: I don’t know. There’s a thin line between craziness and genius. And I think on occasions recently, we’ve definitely seen Elon Musk go on the crazy side of that line rather than the genius side of the line. And I think Reform has probably dodged a bullet. You know, if it had happened a little while ago, they might have had money that they would have had to pay back. Not getting that money now is probably going to turn out to be an advantage. I didn’t think that six weeks ago, but I do now.

Cathy Newman: Briefly, Keir Starmer has had a very rocky start to his premiership. Can he turn things around this year?

Sunder Katwala: Yeah I mean he’s got four years to turn things around so in a way he’s the tortoise against the hare. So we’re going into this hyper-overdrive of politics. And you know in the end he’s got to govern the country, bring about some change. That’s what he’ll be judged on.