British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday that people spreading lies and misinformation online were not interested in supporting those affected and were only interested in themselves.
“Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims, they are interested in themselves,” Starmer said.
Starmer was responding to a question about Elon Musk’s recent attacks on his handling of child rape cases although he did not criticise Musk individually.
Musk – a close ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump – last week backed calls for a national inquiry into the handling of cases of rape by men of Pakistani heritage of underage girls by the government’s prosecution service which Starmer previously ran.
A 2014 inquiry found at least 1,400 children were subjected to sexual exploitation in Rotherham, northern England, between 1997 and 2013.
“We’ve seen this playbook many times, whipping up of intimidation and threats of violence, hoping that the media will amplify it,” Starmer said.
The prime minister highlighted that his safeguarding minister Jess Phillips had received serious threats. Musk described her in a post on his social media platform X last week as a “rape genocide apologist”.
“When the poison of the far-right leads to serious threats to Jess Phillips and others then in my book a line has been crossed,” Starmer said.