Elon Musk’s ‘two-tier Keir’ jibe against British PM wrong

It is summer riot season in England and Northern Ireland and if you believe what Elon Musk posts on X, the UK is in civil war mode. Just because there was a civil war in the reign of King Charles I, Musk and his ilk believe another civil war is inevitable in the reign of King Charles III.

Only joking! However, his prediction was as absolute as it was unhistorical. He knows little about British history and politics and was probably repeating American far-right thinking like that of vice presidential candidate James Vance who claimed Britain under Labour is a Muslim country with nuclear weapons.     

Elon Musk is a billionaire businessman. He identifies with the alternative right who want a counter-revolution in North America and Europe in order to advance supremacist thinking and reverse the equality protection that has been achieved in the West since the 1960s.

They are reactionaries who were in retreat after the defeat of the Nazis last century. They have re-emerged as a result of the information revolution wrought by the internet. They are now able to propagate extreme views remotely that were taboo a few years ago. They do so on platforms such as X that are not subject to the same conditions and restrictions as other mass media organisations – a platform is not strictly a publication but a forum.

There is not going to be a civil war in Britain. Elon Musk is completely wrong about that just as he is completely wrong about two-tier policing in Britain. Historically the British police are ordinary citizens with a few extra powers to arrest and detain wrongdoers. It is why they do not usually carry firearms in Britain and why there is no national police force – within limits the Metropolitan Police in London does provide leadership and support when required but there is no national force.

In the riots across the UK the last two weeks, the police came under sustained attack from groups of men categorised as far-right supporters. It was probably an intelligence-based categorisation although judging by the anti-immigrant slogans by which they identified themselves, far right supporters is an accurate description.

The background to the riots is that on the Monday before last a 17-year-old youth of Rwandan parentage was arrested for the murder of three small girls in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift dance in Southport near Liverpool. He was charged with their murder and the attempted murder of other children, and he will be tried at the Liverpool Crown Court presently. 

As the suspect was under 18 his identity was not disclosed initially and false information spread like wildfire that he was a Muslim asylum seeker. The police disclosed that he was born in Cardiff of Rwandan parents to contain the hysteria but to no avail.

A senior judge then authorised his name to be disclosed exceptionally in the public interest to correct the false information on social media but that did not quell the mob hysteria either.

The false information on social media stoked up hatred of Muslims and asylum seekers in some people who went on the rampage against persons and property perceived to be Muslim. The police were therefore deployed in force to protect the Muslim community and its mosques and cemeteries.

There was never any question of the police preventing any white person from protesting about high levels of immigration. What the police were doing was protecting those under attack because in some parts of the country it was unsafe to walk the streets for persons of a dark hue or in Muslim garb. It was the duty of the police to protect the Muslim community and the duty of Keir Starmer as prime minister to reassure them that the British state would protect its citizens.

Fortunately, in Keir Starmer, Britain has a prime minister with exactly the right set of skills to mobilise the British state to keep the king’s peace and secure community cohesion. Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in England in the summer of 2011 when riots broke out and his experience of how to respond to widespread disorder proved invaluable to him as PM.

Calmly and with no histrionics, he mobilised the British state quickly to arrest, punish and deter those engaged in violent disorder; and speedy justice worked. Judges are entitled to take into account an urgent special need for deterrence by the speedy imposition of heavy sentences and they did so within a week of the arrests and sent out a clear warning to would be rioters.

Elon Musk complained on X again – he owns the platform and has millions of followers and for some reason expressed excessive criticism of the British PM’s suppression of violent disorder. He branded him ‘two-tier-Keir’ and claimed that Starmer was wrong to single out the Muslim community as deserving special protection; all communities are entitled to protection, he said. Musk is wrong if he thinks his alliterative name calling of the PM made what he said memorable or persuasive – it was silly and childish.

The question of the protection of the right to protest by white English people against immigration did not arise in the last two weeks or if it did, it was hijacked by far-right thugs bent on violent disorder. Anyone who believes that the British police would not protect the right of every British citizen peacefully to protest against past and present immigration needs their head examined.

Alper Ali Riza is a king’s counsel in the UK and a former part time judge