According to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, politicians were “jumping on the bandwagon” in the internet discussion around child sexual exploitation, which was founded on false information, reports RTE.
In response to enquiries over a number of social media postings made by Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, Mr. Starmer stated that “a line has been crossed” when the “poison of the far-right” threatens safeguarding minister Jess Phillips and others.
His remarks come after a barrage of posts by the billionaire on his social media platform, X, where he called Ms. Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” and said she “deserves to be in prison” for turning down calls for the Home Office to lead a public investigation into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, Greater Manchester, reports RTE.
Mr. Musk had previously implied that Mr. Starmer was “complicit in the crimes” of child sex abusers and had added, in a different post, “Prison for Starmer.”
In addition, he charged that Gordon Brown, the previous prime minister of the Labour Party, had “committed an unforgivable crime against the British people” by managing gangs while in government, reports RTE.
After giving a lecture at Epsom Hospital in Surrey, Mr. Starmer was questioned about his posts to his 210 million followers. He said, “Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and wide as possible are not interested in victims, they are interested in themselves.”
“Those who are cheering Tommy Robinson are not interested in justice,” he said, criticising Mr. Musk’s backing for the jailed right-wing activist., reports RTE.
“These are people who are trying to get some vicarious thrill from street violence that people like Tommy Robinson promote,” reports RTE.
They are backing a man who was imprisoned for almost destroying a gang grooming case.
He continued by being “concerned about where the Tory party is going on this” and criticising the way prominent Conservatives responded to Mr. Musk’s remarks.
He said: “I think only a few months ago, it would have been unthinkable for things to have been said about Jess Phillips (that) were said recently without all political parties and the leader of the opposition calling it out in terms,” reports RTE.
The prime minister also defended his own track record of combating gang grooming, claiming that as director of public prosecutions, he had addressed the issue “head-on.”
He said: “I reopened cases that had been closed and supposedly finished, I brought the first major prosecution of an Asian grooming gang – in the particular case it was in Rochdale, but it was the first of its kind, there were many that then followed that format. We changed, or I changed, the whole prosecution approach, because I wanted to challenge and did challenge the myths and stereotypes that were stopping those victims being heard,” reports RTE.
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