At the time of writing, pinned to the top of his profile is a poll asking if “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government”.
It’s textbook trolling – and it works. In the space of eight hours, more than a million votes have been cast and plenty of other users of the site formerly known as Twitter have posted outraged comments.
It’s little wonder John Swinney tried his best to avoid directly addressing Musk’s latest outrageous behaviour after giving his first big speech of the year at Edinburgh’s Playfair Library.
He determinedly tried to stick to his script about the importance of the Scottish Budget being passed, despite one journalist after another asking him to comment on the threat posed by the world’s richest man in light of his recent posts and reposts, most on the subject of child sexual exploitation in the UK.
Swinney preferred to issue more general warnings about not “feeding the forces of anti-politics and populism”, and dismissing Musk’s “glib” solutions to problems.
READ MORE: John Swinney sparks anger at Holyrood with ‘populist’ Budget warning
But when asked directly if he thought the billionaire might try to influence the 2026 Holyrood election, as a “test run” for the next UK General Election, he said: “The honest answer is I don’t know what Elon Musk will try to do. I don’t have a direct line and I’m not seeking a direct line.”
In truth, none of us have any idea what Musk might do next – one wonders if even the man himself knows. One minute he was cosying up to Nigel Farage, the next he was saying Reform UK needs a new leader.
On one hand it seems like he wants to use his huge wealth and loud voice to shape political change in the UK, by posting and reposting inflammatory content about serious issues like grooming gangs.
On the other it feels like he is just toying with the likes of Farage for sport, and has no coherent political strategy, only a thirst for chaos and a desire to keep voters angry, confused, and scrolling on his social media site for the latest drama.
It’s easy to say he should just be ignored, that everyone knows you must not feed a troll. But when that troll is the richest man in the world, when he has control of a platform on which he can publish whatever he likes, and when he is calling a UK Government minister a “rape genocide apologist”, the risk of the impact of these words spilling over from the virtual world into the real one starts to feel too high to ignore.
Yesterday Keir Starmer felt the need to set the record straight about his own role in prosecuting grooming gangs, and to defend his safeguarding minister Jess Phillips against the accusation above.
Not everyone was impressed by this detailed response, with Diane Abbott tweeting that “Musk is dominating political debate, and the more attention he gets the more important he thinks he is.”
Of course, Abbott herself has described waiting in vain for any support from Starmer after it was revealed a Tory donor had said she “should be shot”, so it’s no surprise she’s unimpressed.
Swinney has even less reason to engage in any direct criticism of Musk, and the experience of his predecessor as FM will certainly be serving as a cautionary tale. Musk first took aim at Humza Yousaf in October 2023, responding to an edited video of him speaking at Holyrood with the words “what a blatant racist!”
This summer, after the riots sparked by the Southport stabbings, Yousaf repeatedly described Musk as “one of the most dangerous men on the planet”, accused him of amplifying “far-right, white supremacist ideology”, and threatened to take legal action against him for calling him a racist.
The former first minister’s lawyer said this amounted to “painting a target on Yousaf’s back with his completely unacceptable, untrue and inflammatory comments”.
Musk retaliated with an extraordinary post, stating: “Legal discovery will show that however big a racist he’s been in public communications, he is vastly worse in private communications.”
The suggestion seemed to be that Musk had access to the former FM’s private communications – and Yousaf has since said he is certain his direct messages on X were scoured in an attempt to “besmirch” his reputation.
He added that he would not be silenced but his announcement that he won’t stand for Holyrood in 2026 may have given Musk some satisfaction – assuming he even remembers who Yousaf is now that he’s moved on to new targets.
Surely allies of Yousaf will have tried to discourage him from getting involved in a tit-for-tat, which only served to amplify the initial accusations and, as Abbott says, fed Musk’s sense of importance.
The challenge for UK politicians going forward will be deciding when to bite their tongues – even (especially) if the accusations made against them are totally outrageous – and when to rise to the bait because the line between trolling and incitement has been crossed.
All the while we must ask, now more than ever: who would be a politician, with bullying by a billionaire super-villain added to the list of occupational hazards?