Jordan Peterson, left, made a podcast with Tommy Robinson
THE TELEGRAPH | Published January 8, 2025
Reform insiders are convinced the billionaire’s support for Robinson stems from his conversations with the Canadian academic
Reform UK party insiders admit being “blindsided” by Elon Musk’s decision on Sunday night to take out a knife (metaphorically, of course) and stab Nigel Farage in the back and front.
“The Reform party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes,” Mr Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns.
As recently as Christmas, the two were so close that Mr Musk was reported to be pondering a $100 million donation to Reform through the UK branch of Tesla, his electric car company.
They posed for a photograph at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in front of a painting of the president-elect. Their arms are folded, and Mr Farage is grinning for the camera.
He was the cat about to get the cream – except the deal has now turned sour.
Mr Musk could not stomach Mr Farage’s refusal to offer his support for Tommy Robinson, the jailed far-Right extremist.
“Free Tommy Robinson!” Mr Musk wrote on X on Jan 2, and then: “Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth? He should be freed and those who covered up this travesty should take his place in that cell.”
Mr Musk is convinced that Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is a political prisoner, stuck in a cell for trying to expose grooming gangs.
The reality is that Robinson, 42, the founder of the English Defence League and former member of the British National Party, is serving an 18-month sentence for contempt of court for repeating a false claim about a Syrian teenage refugee, who was attacked by another teenager at school.
He has in the past described Islam as a “disease” and “a threat to our way of life”, subsequently dismissing the religion as “backward and fascist”.
What’s baffling is why Mr Musk should be so interested in a cause thousands of miles from home, at a time when anyone else would be concentrating on the task at hand, set for him by Mr Trump, to knock $2 trillion off the US federal budget.
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SOURCE: www.telegraph.co.uk
RELATED: Musk drops UK’s Nigel Farage in favor of far-right figure Tommy Robinson
The American billionaire, who had promised to invest $100 million in the far-right Reform UK party, said Farage ‘doesn’t have what it takes’ to be its leader. The two men are at odds over Tommy Robinson, a jailed far-right activist and conspiracy theorist.
Tommy Robinson, an emblematic figure of the British far right and founder in 2009 of the far-right English Defence League group, leaves Westminster Magistrates’ Court in central London on January 22, 2024. DANIEL LEAL / AFP
LE MONDE | Published January 8, 2025
The photograph sent shivers down the spines of Britain’s Labour and Conservatives alike: On December 16, 2024, Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform UK party, stood smiling alongside Elon Musk beneath a portrait of Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the US president-elect’s estate in Florida. At 60, the former UKIP party leader and Brexit inspirer could hardly conceal his excitement at being the only British political leader to have his way with the future American president and the richest man in the world.
He only weakly denied rumors that Tesla’s CEO was about to invest $100 million in his anti-immigrant party, founded in 2018, to help it become the leading opposition force to Labour. Reform UK is now nipping at the heels of Labour and the Tories in the polls, with around 20% of voting intentions.
On Sunday, January 5, Farage again enjoyed his new media status as Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s most threatening opponent, as the main guest on the BBC’s major weekend political program, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. He called Musk a “hero” and said that the American billionaire’s attention to Reform UK makes his party “look cool.” It would help the party attract younger men, not just older ones, he explained, a demographic essential to winning the British general election.
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SOURCE: www.lemonde.fr
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