Elon Musk, social media, Robert Jenrick, the weather – only one story leads the national discourse this new year: the horror of child-rape gangs. From the attitude of some in power, however, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was just an inconvenient sideshow.

Britain’s government has been pushed onto the defensive by comments from Elon Musk accusing Prime Minister Keir Starmer of complicity in a decades-old scandal over child sexual exploitation gangs.Listen to the Bloomberg UK Politics podcast on Apple,

Sir Keir Starmer has accused tech billionaire Elon Musk and right-wing populists of spreading lies about child abuse grooming gangs and warned “they have crossed a line”.

Musk’s posts, which have racked up hundreds of millions of views on X, are his latest effort at inserting himself into UK politics.

The prime minister says those who spread misinformation about child sexual exploitation are "not interested in victims".

Tech tycoon Elon Musk tweeted ‘prison for Starmer’ and claimed previous Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown committed an ‘unforgivable crime against the British people’

Multi-billionaire Elon Musk has accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of being "deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes". Mr Musk has published a series of posts on X suggesting Starmer failed to deal with the grooming gang scandal while head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) between 2008 and 2013.

Keir Starmer defended his work as Britain's top prosecutor, refusing to mention Elon Musk by name but addressing Musk's criticism that, long before he became prime minister, he had failed to prosecute gangs who sexually abused girls.

Sir Keir Starmer has defended his record on tackling grooming gangs, after tech billionaire Elon Musk launched a social media attack on the prime minister on the issue. Starmer adds, "those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims,