U.K.’s Starmer Slams ‘Lies and Misinformation’ After Elon Musk Attacks

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain on Monday fired back at Elon Musk after days of inflammatory social media posts by Mr. Musk, the billionaire owner of X, indirectly accusing him and others of “spreading lies and misinformation” about victims of child sex abuse gangs.

“Those who are spreading lies and misinformation, as far and as wide as possible, are not interested in victims,” Mr. Starmer told reporters at an event south of London dedicated to repairing the National Health Service. “They’re interested in themselves.”

Mr. Starmer also defended himself against accusations by Mr. Musk that he did not act quickly enough against gangs that abused and exploited young girls, when he was head of public prosecutions. An estimated 1,400 girls were exploited in the northern town of Rotherham by “grooming gangs” made up largely of British Pakistani men in cases that date back to before 2010. Similar gangs were also found to be operating in other towns and cities in England, including Oldham and Telford.

The prime minister noted that when he was director of the Crown Prosecution Service, between 2008 and 2013, his office brought the first case against an Asian grooming gang and drafted new guidelines for the mandatory reporting of child sex offenses. He had tackled the scandal “head on,” he said.

“There’s nothing secret about being director of public prosecutions,” Mr. Starmer said. “Every single case I prosecuted went to court, was looked at by a judge.”

Mr. Musk has repeatedly asserted, without evidence, that Mr. Starmer had covered up the abuses. He also claimed that Jess Phillips, the Labour government’s under secretary for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, was a “rape genocide apologist” because she pushed back on calls for a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, a town near Manchester.

Ms. Phillips, who has long campaigned for women’s rights, had instead called for a local investigation to be run by Oldham’s local authorities, rather than the central government.

Mr. Starmer staunchly defended Ms. Phillips. “Those attacking Jess Phillips are not protecting victims,” he said. “Jess Phillips has done a thousand times more than they’ve even dreamt about when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse.”

The online accusations “crossed a line,” Mr. Starmer said, adding, “Once we lose the anchor that truth matters, in the robust debate that we must have, then we are on a very slippery slope.”

While Mr. Starmer’s tone was robust, he avoided commenting on Mr. Musk’s broader motives in attacking Britain. Mr. Musk is a close ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, with whom Mr. Starmer has tried to cultivate ties.

Instead, the prime minister criticized British politicians, including Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, as seeking to exploit the divisions created by Mr. Musk’s posts.

Ms. Badenoch on Thursday called for a national public inquiry into what she referred to as “the rape gangs scandal.” It has already been the subject of local and national inquiries dating back to 2014, and a national inquiry into the broader problem of child sexual abuse concluded in 2022 after 325 days of public hearings.

“When politicians — and I mean politicians who sat in government for many years — are casual about honesty, decency, truth and the rule of law,” Mr. Starmer said, “calling for inquiries because they want to jump on a bandwagon of the far right, that affects politics, because a robust debate can only be based on the true facts.”

Earlier on Monday morning, Mr. Musk wrote “Prison for Starmer” in one post on X, and in another, which he pinned to the top of his profile, he invited his 210 million followers to vote on the statement: “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government.”