‘I Am Troubled When the BBC Treats This as a Serious Story’

Elon Musk has jumped on a long-trundling, far-right bandwagon and has been using his huge global platform on X to weaponize child sex abuse, in order to call for the resignation of Keir Starmer who he claims is “complicit” in an infamous grooming scandal.

In his latest post on the matter on 8 January, Musk appealed to the British public to “call your member of parliament and tell them that the hundreds of thousands of little girls in Britain who were, and are still are, being systematically, horrifically gang-raped deserve some justice in this world”.

“This is vitally important or it will just keep happening”, he added.

But Musk appears to be omitting one important factor in his bizarre crusade against Starmer — the truth.

“I can’t think of a better word for it than bullshit”, Tom Baldwin, author of Keir Starmer: The Biography, told Adrian Goldberg on the latest edition of the Byline Podcast.

In 2010, the towns of Rochdale, Oldham and Rotherham became the center of a huge scandal as the prosecution of men for the grooming and sexual abuse of thousands of young girls began.

An inquiry led by Prof Alexis Jay concluded in 2014 that around 1,400 children had been sexually exploited in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by men of Pakistani heritage.

In 2022, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) said child sex abuse was “endemic” across England and Wales across all sections of society, not just among men of Pakistani heritage.

The IICSA was launched in 2014 in the wake of the scandals involving Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris, and highlighted abuse in communities including the Catholic and Anglican churches.

Despite this, the far-right — and now Musk — decided to ignore the approximately 85% of child sex abuse carried out by white offenders, and focus solely on the cases like those in Rochdale.

This was reflected in Starmer’s response to Musk who on 6 January hit back at those “spreading lies and misinformation”, saying they are “not interested in victims, they’re interested in themselves”.

Starmer has become a target for Musk as he ran the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) between 2008 and 2013 and was responsible for bringing charges against those who committed crimes in England and Wales.

Shortly after Starmer took over, the CPS decided not to prosecute those accused of child sex abuse in Rochdale. 

This decision was overturned in 2011 by Nazir Afzal, the then-chief prosecutor for north-west England, who has said Starmer was “100% behind the decision”.

Nine offenders were then brought to justice in 2012.

“Keir Starmer has done an enormous amount as Director of Public Prosecutions in his job beforehand, to not only prosecute rape gangs, but to make the connection and bring these people to justice in a way that very few people have,” Baldwin said.

“And he’s got an incredibly good record about this. And when he talks about violence against women or girls, it’s a really personal mission to him. He really feels it intensely.”

Stamer highlighted his record while defending himself, saying: “I changed the whole prosecution approach because I wanted to challenge, and did challenge, the myths and stereotypes that were stopping those victims being heard. So we changed the entire approach, not without criticism at the time, I might add.

“And when I left office, we had the highest number of child sexual abuse cases being prosecuted on record. Now, that record is not secret. As a public servant, it’s all out there for all of you or everybody to see.”

All of this has been ignored by Musk who has made several incendiary comments on X about Starmer.

Musk’s post quoted above was retweeting a post from Reform MP Rupert Lowe, who was calling for “a full national inquiry into the Pakistani rape gang scandal”, ignoring the fact there has already been the IICSA, the recommendations of which have yet to be implemented.

Musk also claimed Starmer was “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes” despite the fact Starmer wasn’t even a politician at the time.

He’s also targeted safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, calling her  a “rape genocide apologist” and calling for her to be imprisoned.

Despite the truth of the matter, or the defence laid out by Starmer, Baldwin says the damage has already been done.

“The reason why they do it is because you can say almost anything online now, and respectable fact-checking websites will say, well, this is complete nonsense, this is garbage”, he said.

“But these smears have a way of working their way into the crevices of social media.”

“It’s a very weird world where Starmer is suddenly now being accused of covering up or even participating in ‘rape genocide’ on the basis of absolutely nothing,” he adds.

Baldwin quotes the infamous incident when then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson falsely claimed Starmer had failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile.

There was no truth to the claim and even Rishi Sunak distanced himself from his boss, yet almost half of Tory voters polled a few days later said it was “probably true”.

And according to Baldwin, the media is also partly to blame for fuelling the controversy — the social media posts of a South African-born businessman who hasn’t even taken up his post in the White House yet have dominated headlines for days, and in turn dominated the political discourse.

“Dealing with Elon Musk’s tweets are not a priority, and it shouldn’t be leading the news now”, Baldwin said.

“I am troubled when the BBC treats this as a serious story about Keir Starmer having to defend his record — he’s not defending his record, he’s pointing out that this is absolute bullshit.

“There’s lots of criticisms you make of Keir Starmer, lots of criticisms you make of this government — being soft on rape gangs really isn’t one of them.”

Listen to this full edition of the Byline Times Podcast here.