Reform UK party insiders admit being “blindsided” by Elon Musk’s decision on Sunday night to take out a knife (metaphorically, of course) and stab Nigel Farage in the back and front.
“The Reform party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes,” Mr Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns.
As recently as Christmas, the two were so close that Mr Musk was reported to be pondering a $100 million donation to Reform through the UK branch of Tesla, his electric car company.
They posed for a photograph at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in front of a painting of the president-elect. Their arms are folded, and Mr Farage is grinning for the camera.
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He was the cat about to get the cream – except the deal has now turned sour.
Mr Musk could not stomach Mr Farage’s refusal to offer his support for Tommy Robinson, the jailed far-Right extremist.
“Free Tommy Robinson!” Mr Musk wrote on X on Jan 2, and then: “Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth? He should be freed and those who covered up this travesty should take his place in that cell.”
Mr Musk is convinced that Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is a political prisoner, stuck in a cell for trying to expose grooming gangs.
The reality is that Robinson, 42, the founder of the English Defence League and former member of the British National Party, is serving an 18-month sentence for contempt of court for repeating a false claim about a Syrian teenage refugee, who was attacked by another teenager at school.
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He has in the past described Islam as a “disease” and “a threat to our way of life”, subsequently dismissing the religion as “backward and fascist”.
What’s baffling is why Mr Musk should be so interested in a cause thousands of miles from home, at a time when anyone else would be concentrating on the task at hand, set for him by Mr Trump, to knock $2 trillion off the US federal budget.
The answer, it appears, lies at the door of Jordan Peterson, the Canadian academic and culture warrior, who last summer gave Robinson a platform that seems to have caught Mr Musk’s attention.
At the start of July, Peterson uploaded an episode of his podcast, entitled Why The Establishment Hates This Man: Tommy Robinson.
He followed that with a second podcast, on Aug 16, called Crime and Punishment, in which Robinson was described as “a British journalist and activist who first became an establishment target after reporting on the grooming gangs in Luton”.
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Robinson and his family, claimed the podcast blurb, “from then on… have been smeared and punished for attempting to out those who are enabling Islamic extremism”.
Between the two Robinson episodes, Dr Peterson interviewed Mr Musk live on X over the course of two hours in a broadcast watched by more than seven million people.
Reform insiders are convinced that Mr Musk’s support for Robinson stems from Peterson’s conversation with the billionaire.“It is noticeable,” said the source, “that Elon Musk’s support for Robinson comes after he was interviewed by Jordan Peterson, to whom he is believed to be close.”
Shortly afterwards, Britain would erupt in far-Right riots and Robinson would be blamed for stoking much of the hatred that stemmed from the horrifying attack in Southport in which three children died.
Mr Musk has, according to sources, gleaned his information about Robinson from listening to and watching the Peterson podcasts, and the pair are thought to have discussed the case.
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On Jan 2, Peterson posted on X a fresh message of support for Robinson who, he said, “has been trying to tell the truth to idiot moralising ‘liberals’ for more than a decade”. He followed that with reposts of links to his two interviews with Robinson, the second of which he did with his wife Tammy. Mr Musk then shared a link to Peterson’s first interview with Robinson.
“It would be no surprise,” said one insider, “if Elon was getting his information on Tommy from Jordan. He will have listened to the podcasts.”
The ensuing storm has engulfed Mr Farage and Mr Musk. Robinson has clearly become some kind of talisman for America’s far Right. Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist who remains close to the president-elect, has in the past described Robinson as “a hero” and “the backbone” of Britain.
Mr Musk welcomed Robinson back to X after buying the social media platform, while it is claimed he has earned large amounts from sympathetic US donors.
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