Elon Musk viciously turns on Nigel Farage

And their love affair was going so well! A heartbroken Farage is given a brutal lesson in where political opportunism can lead

And to think that the love affair between Nigel Farage and Elon Musk was going so well. Sure, some might have regarded it as absolutely ludicrous that a British politician claiming to be “the man of the people” taking on the elites, a proud defender of British sovereignty, was going cap in hand to the richest man on earth, a US plutocrat, who was preparing to throw a vast sum of money at Farage’s Reform UK party in a shameless intervention in British democracy.

A gruesome marriage, not least as Elon Musk has clearly been radicalising at a dramatic pace, increasingly veering off into the more extreme elements of the far right.

Well that beautiful love affair, which has certainly touched all of our hearts, has come to a truly devastating end as Musk turns on his former comrade in arms. There are certainly some instructive lessons in this drama.

A bit of context. Elon Musk and the American far right have been having their own little barney. Even as Musk becomes ever more extreme, he’s still a businessman who wants to make money. So he is accordingly advocating for more H-1B visas for foreign workers to come to Silicon Valley, on the grounds that insufficient Americans are studying science and technology. He even turned on what he called ‘hateful, unrepentant racists’ who he said would ‘absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed’.

That caused fury amongst the MAGA base, many of whom are frankly biological racists who don’t want anyone who isn’t white coming to the United States in any circumstances.

That tension is itself interesting and has a long history.

That history touches on the relationship between the far right and big business, and also the inherent contradictions in far right thought. The Nazis notoriously forged an alliance with German big business, who helped them into power, and who profited from Nazi crimes, like the Holocaust. Racism was clearly central to Nazi ideology, and yet even that was subject to realpolitik: for example, Japanese people were characterised as ‘Honorary Aryans’ and of course Nazi Germany ended up in alliance with Imperial Japan.

Now it’s perfectly reasonable to say there are differences between what would you could call the ‘mainstream far right’ today and the Nazis, though I’d note that the mainstream far right is radicalising fast, and many of their figures are pretending to be more moderate than they really are.

But in the case of the US, many of the leading figures in MAGA are clearly unrepentant white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Anyway, large swathes of MAGA turned on Musk, and so Musk then clearly decided that he needed to undo the damage, because Musk could not scream louder “someone who is desperate to be liked”, and was clearly blindsided by the backlash he got from Trump’s base.

So he goes in hard backing the far right AfD in Germany, and in particular sticks his oar in British politics, backing the repeatedly convicted far right criminal Tommy Robinson, as well as variously demanding the overthrow of the British Government by the British King over the raping and grooming of white girls by Britons of Pakistani origin, completely erasing the rape and sexual assault of children of any ethnicity by white Britons, and repeatedly signal boosting hideous racism.

Now Farage was then handed a problem by his new bestie. His Reform UK Party had its best showing at the last general election, winning over 4 million votes and securing 5 seats, with polling showing his party’s support had increased since the last general election thanks to the Labour government’s self-immolation. But he is canny enough to understand that Tommy Robinson is completely toxic.

Robinson is someone who led the English Defence League, who were a bunch of far right thugs, recruited originally from football hooliganism, whose demonstrations often descended into alcohol and cocaine-fuelled thuggish mayhem.

Here’s the sorts of things Tommy Robinson has said. In 2011 he threatened the whole Muslim community of Britain:

“Every single Muslim watching this… on 7/7 you got away with killing and maiming British citizens… you had better understand that we have built a network from one end of the country to the other end… and the Islamic community will feel the full force of the English Defence League if we see any of our British citizens killed, maimed, or hurt on British soil ever again.”

He’s been arrested and jailed multiple times. He was first given a 12 month prison sentence in 2005 for assaulting an off duty police officer. He got a community order in 2011 for a football brawl. He got jailed for 10 months in 2013 for using someone else’s passport to enter the US. He got jailed for 18 months for mortgage fraud.

He subsequently got jailed for interfering with a grooming gang trial in Leeds, which literally threatened to collapse the trial.

He then made false accusations about a Syrian refugee schoolboy, lost a libel case then taken against him and was ordered to pay £100,000. He then breached an injunction by repeating the libels, and pleaded guilty to doing so, and therefore was jailed for 18 months for contempt of court.

It should also be noted that there were numerous examples of sexual predators, including those preying on children, in the ranks of the English Defence League.

Now would you believe, most people in Britain don’t like that sort of guy! The people who love him - and they do adore him - are a very small number of radicalised extremists.

As the polling shows, 4% of the British population have a very positive view of Tommy Robinson, 7% have a somewhat positive view, whilst 41% have a very negative view, 8% say a somewhat negative view.

Clearly Reform UK would tank if they hitched themselves to this hateful thug and Farage knows that. Unfortunately Musk has become infatuated with Tommy Robinson, tweeting ‘Free Tommy Robinson!’ amongst other things. Musk promoted a tweet suggesting that Tommy Robinson is in jail because of grooming gangs, which just is not true at all.

So then Farage goes on TV and fact checks Musk about why Tommy Robinson is really in prison, and rules him out joining Reform UK.

Now Farage doesn’t deserve any real kudos here - he’s just realises that Tommy Robinson is toxic, which he of course is.

But Farage remained at pains to show he much he loves Musk in an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

Musk is a “hero”, he says. And then Musk comes out and says:

“The Reform Party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes.”

Oof. Poor old Nige then comes out, broken hearted, and tweets:

Well, this is a surprise! Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree.

My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I never sell out my principles.

To be honest, Musk seems increasingly unstable: his Twitter output suggests someone having some sort of episode.

But Farage’s naked opportunism has blown up in his face. He can’t turn round now and say: British democracy should belong to its people, not to billionaires, and certainly not billionaires who don’t even have anything to do with this country.

He can’t even say that it’s up to Reform UK members to decide who their leader is, given they have no voting rights.

But perhaps we shouldn’t laugh too much. Musk is politically very dangerous, using his vast power to promote extremism and attempting to destabilise already deeply flawed, crisis-ridden democracies. He is using his position to promote hateful extremists, at a time when hateful extremism is on the rise.

That Farage is too moderate for him - well that tells its own story, and Musk is now the most powerful figure in the court of the soon to be US President.

It’s like the US version of the National Front has taken over the only superpower on earth in the digital age. That is scary. We’ve got a rocky few years ahead.