Musk doubles down in grooming gangs row after being accused of ‘spreading lies’ by Starmer: Live

Elon Musk called for Nigel Farage to be replaced as Reform UK leader – and has since appeared to endorse Rupert Lowe, the Great Yarmouth MP, as his possible successor.

Rupert James Graham Lowe is a British politician and businessman, and the Reform UK MP for Great Yarmouth. The 67-year-old was elected in 2024, becoming one of the party’s five MPs.

Wresting the Norfolk seat from Conservative control, Mr Lowe’s victory was seen as one of Reform’s most significant. The businessman pushed Rishi Sunak’s party into third place, winning 35.3 per cent of the vote to the Tories’ 24.6 per cent and Labour’s 31.8 per cent.

It has been a relatively short journey into Whitehall for Mr Lowe, who first entered politics in 2019, becoming a MEP for the Brexit Party – which later evolved to become Reform UK. Before entering politics, he was best-known as chair of Southampton Football Club, overseeing the team from 1996 until 2009 with just a two-year break.

Our audience reporter Albert Toth has more details:

Sir Keir Starmer’s biographer has defended the prime minister’s record on prosecuting grooming gangs, saying that he “has done more done more to bring them to justice than Farage, Yaxley-Lennon – or Musk – will ever do”.

Journalist and author Tom Baldwin said on X: “I doubt any Troll here who’s trying to smear ⁦Keir Starmer⁩ about decade-old events will be interested to read these pages from my book about his record prosecuting rape gangs. But he’s done more to bring them to justice than Farage, Yaxley-Lennon – or Musk – will ever do.”

He added: “I suspect Keir Starmer’s attack on the lies and misinformation about rape gangs will garner more media interest than important NHS announcements today. Trolls crave attention and they’ve got it. That said, all fair-minded people will be applauding him for finally speaking out.”

Earlier, the PM criticised Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s backing of calls for an inquiry into grooming gangs, after the previous government also rejected such calls by Oldham Council, saying: “When politicians who sat in government for many years are casual about honesty, decency, truth and the rule of law, calling for inquiries because they want to jump on a bandwagon of the far right, then that affects politics because a robust debate can only be based on the true facts.

“This is actually an important point about our politics, not what about what anybody may or may not say on Twitter.”

But this was interpreted by some critics as the PM painting anyone sympathising with further calls for an inquiry as “far right”.

Repeating his baseless and lurid claims about Sir Keir – who earlier described overseeing “the first major prosecution of an Asian grooming gang” while director of public prosecutions – Mr Musk said: “What an insane thing to say!

“The real reason is that it would show how Starmer repeatedly ignored the pleas of vast numbers of little girls and their parents, in order to secure political support. Starmer is utterly despicable.”

Elon Musk has doubled down on his criticism of Keir Starmer in a new flurry of posts on X, following the prime minister’s denunciation of the billionaire entrepreneur’s “lies and misinformation”.

In one post, Mr Musk shared a clip from the press conference in which GB News asked whether the PM was afraid a national inquiry into grooming gangs “might expose failings” during his role as director of public prosecutions.

While Sir Keir highlighted the work he did to bring prosecutions and change processes to encourage further justice while chief prosecutor, Mr Musk wrote: “Real answer is yes”.

He then added the further baseless claim: “Starmer was deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes. That’s what the inquiry would show.”

Asked about Mr Musk’s posts to his 210 million followers following his speech at Epsom Hospital in Surrey, the PM said: “Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims, they are interested in themselves.”

While the government’s increased interest in improving the NHS is surely welcomed, throwing money at the problem is rarely a solution, writes doctor Sarah Williams.

For departments on the frontline, like mine, it looks as though we won’t see much of that additional investment anyway.

If the government is to pull funding from key areas such as emergency medicine, mental health and community healthcare to fund a political target of 92 per cent of routine operations and appointments within 18 weeks, they have misunderstood the real problems: bed space, patient flow and staffing.

British food sales to Europe have plummeted by a fifth since 2018, the farming minister has admitted, sparking calls for Labour to slash post-Brexit red tape and strike a food standards agreement with the EU.

Daniel Zeichner said that while the UK’s current deal with the EU allows tariff-free access to the bloc, leaving the single market and customs union has “had an impact on the export of agri-food products”.

Archie Mitchell has the exclusive report here:

A member of Sir Keir Starmer’s top team has referred herself to the government’s independent ethics adviser over her links to the deposed prime minister of Bangladesh.

Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq, who is responsible for tackling financial crime, will be investigated by standards watchdog Sir Laurie Magnus amid questions over her aunt Sheikh Hasina, who was removed from power after protests against her rule last year.

Our political correspondent Archie Mitchell reports:

In his latest piece for Independent Voices, Jon Sopel writes:

You know that moment when your child gets home from school and you’re aware something bad has happened? Then, it all comes out: the person your child thought was his new best mate isn’t that nice after all. And he’s worried that his other longstanding friend might side with him, because the other two seem really tight. And you listen attentively, if slightly bewildered, to learn the spat is all the fault of that horrid kid in the class, Tommy.

Well, in this story it’s Nigel Farage who’s fallen out with the school’s Mr Flash – Elon Musk… all because Nige hasn’t shown loyalty to another kid, Tommy (Robinson, of course), who has been expelled. And Farage is worried that his longstanding best friend, Donald Trump, might side with Elon because they seem inseparable – always hanging around the playground together, sniggering at the back of the classroom, Elon letting Don copy his algebra homework.

If it wasn’t so consequential for British politics, it might be easy just to play it for laughs.

But it does matter. Having played an outsized role in the US presidential election in November – and few can doubt Musk’s significance, both in terms of financial muscle and his alleged recalibration of the X algorithm to promote and amplify Trump’s messages – it looks like the world’s richest man is turning to the UK as his next political playground.

Sir Keir Starmer has unveiled the full details of Labour’s plan to reform the NHS and reduce waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks.

The prime minister claimed the reforms were about providing more convenience for patients with the country facing a crippling NHS waiting list backlog.

“This plan is a comprehensive level of that mindset, an NHS that treats patients more quickly, that is closer to their lives, gives them the level of convenience that they take for granted in nearly every other service they use every day,” he said on Monday.

Rachel Clun has this report on some of the key changes, and what they will mean for you:

In his speech earlier, Sir Keir Starmer said that more complex NHS cases would be “put through” the private sector.

The PM added: “On the private sector, the broad issue is really to make sure that the capacity we’re able to use for the private sector is more comprehensive, is in areas which aren’t necessarily usually covered by these agreements, which sometimes can be the sort of easiest operations, if you like, put through the private sector.

“We want to broaden that to make better use of the capacity that is there.”