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Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has ramped up his calls for far-right US billionaire Elon Musk and his platform X to face prosecution, in an interview with Byline Times.
Elon Musk has threatened legal action against Sir Ed in recent days after the Lib Dem leader branded him a “criminal” for his alleged incitement of violence on Britain’s streets at the recent Tommy Robinson rally in London, and for allowing hate speech and child sexual abuse to run rampant on his platform.
Speaking to this outlet from the party’s Autumn conference in Bournemouth on Monday, Davey said: “I’m afraid the X platform being run by Elon Musk looks like it’s breaking the law, and he needs to be held to account.”
“Just because he’s a wealthy man who’s found himself very powerful doesn’t mean he’s beyond the law. The Online Safety Act, which is the law I think he and X have broken by allowing videos of child sexual abuse to appear on their platform and promoting grooming and self-harm, is a law that he hates because it’s going to hit him in his pocket.”
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Davey added that “only Nigel Farage” is saying the Prime Minister should get rid of the Online Safety Act, which introduces tough new standards for platforms to clamp down on illegal content, and material which harms children.
“Nigel Farage looks like he’s sucking up to tech billionaires like Elon Musk. That would make a wild west of social media in our country, and it means more children, young people and families are exposed to this appalling material,” the former coalition minister added.
Asked if he planned to fight any legal threats from Musk, Davey said: “We’re not worried about that. I think we’re speaking up for the vast majority of British people who don’t want this stuff and want powerful people to be held to account.”
“We’re not going to allow this tech billionaire from the United States to interfere in our country and damage the welfare of our children,” he said.
Davey pointed to Musk’s comments that “civil war is inevitable” in the UK. “It’s bad enough that he calls for the overthrow of the democratically elected Government or incites violence. This is not a man who cares about Britain. He doesn’t care about people. He certainly doesn’t care about our children,” the Lib Dem leader claimed.
However, asked why the Lib Dems remained paying members of X, Davey said: “While he owns the platform, he should face the full force of the law. [But] I’m not going to deplatform myself. I want to be there taking him on and taking on the sorts of ideas that he promotes with his algorithms, which sow division and hatred. It’s right that politicians are there arguing back against him.”
Davey did recently “deplatform” himself by refusing an invite to Donald Trump’s state dinner during last week’s UK visit.
But Davey claimed the two scenarios were not comparable: “Having had this huge honour to go to six state banquets before, I know you never get to speak to the visiting head of state. I wouldn’t have had a chance to speak to Trump. But by doing what I did, I actually changed the debate in the country.”
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He added: “I was saying that President Trump is the one man in the world who could phone Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, and say, “Stop the fighting, get the food, medicine and water into Gaza,” and President Trump could phone the Government of Qatar and tell them to tell Hamas to release the hostages. I wanted that to be an issue of debate during Trump’s visit, and it turned out it was.”
Davey said he was “very worried” Trump’s politics was heading to the UK via Reform UK. Leader Nigel Farage has repeatedly gone to the US to drum up support for his party among pro-Trump (MAGA) Republicans.
“Nigel Farage doesn’t care about British values. He wants Britain to be more like Trump’s America. And I think that’s dangerous…[The public] don’t want private medical health insurance instead of the NHS. They don’t want handguns unbanned, like you see with the mass shootings in America.”
And he condemned Reform UK mirroring Trump’s attacks on the press: “Reform in Nottinghamshire won’t allow the press to talk to the council there. So this is all from President Trump’s playbook, and that’s what Nigel Farage stands for.”
The Lib Dems recently wrote to the Prime Minister calling for sanctions on Elon Musk to be considered by the Government.
Asked what that would involve, Davey told Byline Times: “I have to leave it to the authorities. Ofcom and the courts decide—we need a formal process…But I think the evidence is clear that he and his platform X have broken the law, and I think we should give Ofcom and the authorities all the power they need to bring people like Elon Musk to account.”
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It echoes comments to this newspaper from the party’s deputy leader Daisy Cooper, who said at the weekend: “As long as there are people on X who want to hear our message, there is certainly scope for us to continue to use it.”
“I post on there from time to time. I don’t tend to use it for much engagement because of the kind of vitreol [on there]…Individuals can make their own choices of whether they want to be on there or not. As long as there are people on it through any social media platform, we as a political party need to be where people are that might vote for us.”
She added: “The key to this is not to boycott a particular platform or to walk away from it. The key is to make sure we regulate it so it’s safe, safe for our children and safe for public health.”
Today the Lib Dems launched a call for social media apps like X to come with ‘health warnings’ for under-18s, notifying them of the risks to their mental health – like cigarettes come with labelling noting their damage to health. The party’s tech spokesperson said young people “deserve to know” the risks of “doomscrolling” and harmful content online to their mental health.
“Tech giants profiting from children’s attention at least need to come clean” about their risks to young people, Victoria Collins MP said.
The moves include proposals for a “doomscrolling cap” – which would end the ‘infinite scroll’ feature on short-form online platforms for young people, limiting the amount of time for which children are pushed TikTok-style video content to two hours – and health alerts on social media platforms for under-18s.
Similar health warnings were mooted by previous US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who served under presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, last year.
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