Britain won’t win a free-speech fight against Elon Musk

For nearly two weeks, British politics has been dominated by anti-immigration riots that have flared into violence in a dozen towns and cities across the country. Social media has played a key role in fueling the controversy: accusations have flown back and forth, and misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories have found fertile ground on X (formerly Twitter).

The most remarkable feature, arguably, has been the active and incendiary involvement of X owner Elon Musk.

Musk has always been outspoken and unpredictable on political issues. He calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” and explained that he originally bought Twitter because of “its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe…free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.” Although he describes himself as “politically moderate,” many have classified him as a libertarian. Recently, he has become identified with right-wing politics, and he increasingly airs or promotes conspiracy theories.

The dangers of mass immigration and the limits of multiculturalism have become favorite talking points. On Aug. 4, commenting on video footage of the rioting in Britain, he remarked “Civil war is inevitable,” a post that was viewed nearly 10 million times. Later that day he expanded: “If incompatible cultures are brought together without assimilation, conflict is inevitable.” He has also commented on or liked posts by conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists like Tommy Robinson, co-founder of the English Defence League.

Musk then raised the stakes and began attacking Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour government. When Starmer condemned attacks on mosques and Muslim communities, the tech billionaire countered, “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?” Musk then made the clash personal by amplifying accusations that ethnic minorities in Britain were policed more cautiously than white people in a corrosive two-tier system of law enforcement, seizing on the catchy hashtag #TwoTierKeir.

There has been an outraged backlash from Labour supporters. While ministers have been warned not to risk engaging with Musk, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has sounded the alarm about social media platforms more generally.

“It is unacceptable that social media has provided a platform for this hate,” he told The Times. “When I spoke to the companies I was very clear that they also have a responsibility not to peddle the harm of those who seek to damage and divide our society.” He hinted strongly that there might be new legislation to create stricter regulation of online content.

Some of his colleagues outside government want to go further, to go toe-to-toe with Musk. In September, chairs will be elected for the House of Commons’s select committees that scrutinize each government department, and there are two Labour MPs, Dawn Butler and Chi Onwurah, vying to head the committee overseeing Kyle’s department. Both want Musk to appear before them and answer questions over X’s regulation and the parameters of free speech.

Butler and Onwurah are no doubt sincere, but they can also smell a powerful media opportunity. When Rupert Murdoch was quizzed about his tabloid newspapers hacking phones by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in 2011, he abased himself before the MPs (and then had shaving foam thrust in his face by a comedian); in 2016, retail billionaire Philip Green spent six hours wrangling angrily with the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee.

Parliament is in danger of setting up a show-down it can only lose. There are practical reasons: its committees have the power to “send for persons, papers and records” and can issue a formal summons to a witness who is unwilling to attend; this was enough to bring Murdoch to Westminster. If the summons is ignored, the witness can be reported to the House for contempt.

But in practical terms there are few powers to compel attendance. In the past, the Commons has fined or even imprisoned those it finds in contempt, but the last fine was issued in 1666, and no one has been detained since 1880. It is unlikely these powers would withstand contemporary legal challenges.

More fundamentally, Musk lives in Texas, and is well beyond the jurisdiction of the House of Commons. A committee chair risks being reduced to righteous but impotent rage if Musk does not cooperate — and why would he?

More worrying is the knee-jerk illiberalism of the government and its supporters. No one is defending harassment or incitement to violence, but both are already offences under U.K. law, and it is far from clear that Musk’s provocative remarks would meet the threshold for a prosecution. Peter Kyle bemoaned the fact that Musk was “accountable to no one,” but to whom should he be accountable? X Corp. is a private company of which he is the majority owner, and a social media platform is a private enterprise rather than a public service. Within the law, Musk can say what he likes.

Musk is an attention-seeking, hyperbolic provocateur, and free speech is never absolute but always qualified. But the test of genuine freedom of speech, the test the British government now faces, is not to defend the liberty of those with whom you agree but those whom you despise. If Musk’s public statements have not met the criminal threshold, it is no business of a responsible liberal government to seek to draw tighter boundaries around what can and cannot be said.

Ultimately, Starmer would do well to grasp that a public fight against the edgelord king of X is not one he can win. Musk lives in another jurisdiction, relishes combat and has a fortune of billions at his disposal. The government should let him blow, crack his cheeks, rage and allow him to expose his own emptiness, while it addresses the real problems of restoring law and order.

Musk is only important in the political narrative as ministers allow him to be. A statement by Downing Street this week backed away from the idea of revisiting censorship laws, which is a sensible response. Walk on by.

Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.