London
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Billionaire Elon Musk on Saturday said that the United Kingdom needs “revolutionary government change,” speaking virtually at a far-right anti-immigration protest in London.
The comments from the world’s richest man, a former adviser to Donald Trump, came days before the US president’s upcoming state visit to Britain, which is four years away from the next scheduled general election.
“There needs to be massive government reform in Britain and the people need to be in charge, not some bureaucracy that doesn’t care,” Musk said in a Q&A with far-right political activist Tommy Robinson, the organizer of the rally, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
“We must have revolutionary government change… This really requires everyone to sort of marshal the people, to take charge, reform the government, and make sure that you actually have a government that is for the people, by the people,” the billionaire said.
Musk has been wading into UK politics for some time now. Last summer, during a wave of violent anti-immigration riots in Britain, the Tesla chief executive and owner of X said that “civil war is inevitable.”
In January, he said that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer should be in prison when dredging up a years-long scandal over historic child sex abuse in parts of England.
For a while, Musk was allied with Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist party Reform UK. But the friendship fell apart earlier this year when Farage refused to echo Musk’s support for Robinson, the founder of the now-defunct anti-immigration English Defence League (EDL), who was previously jailed for being in contempt of court by repeating false accusations about a Syrian refugee.
In other inflammatory remarks on Saturday, Musk told the crowd via livestream on a big screen that “violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die.”
He also referenced the killing of the American political activist Charlie Kirk in the United States on Wednesday, saying that “people on the left” were “openly” celebrating his death.
“The left is the party of murder and celebrating murder,” Musk said.
Britain’s Business Secretary Peter Kyle called Musk’s speech “slightly incomprehensible” and “totally inappropriate” in an interview with the BBC on Sunday.
But Kyle added that Robinson’s protest – which drew between 110,000 and 150,000 demonstrators according to police – showed that those in power need to address “big concerns” that the public may have, including immigration.
“I think these are moments that are klaxon calls to us in public life to redouble our efforts to address the big concerns that people right across our country have,” Kyle said. He also said that the demonstration proved that free speech is “alive and well in this country.”
London’s Metropolitan Police Service said 24 people were arrested, while 26 police officers were injured, including four seriously, at the far-right protest Saturday. Injuries included broken teeth, a possible broken nose, a concussion, a prolapsed disc and a head injury, the force said in a statement Saturday night.
