U.K.’s Starmer Slams ‘Lies and Misinformation’ After Elon Musk Attacks

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain on Monday fired back at Elon Musk after days of inflammatory social media posts by Mr. Musk, the billionaire owner of X, indirectly accusing him and others of “spreading lies and misinformation” about victims of child sex abuse gangs.

“Those who are spreading lies and misinformation, as far and as wide as possible, are not interested in victims,” Mr. Starmer told reporters at an event south of London dedicated to repairing the National Health Service. “They’re interested in themselves.”

Mr. Starmer also defended himself against accusations by Mr. Musk that he did not act quickly enough against gangs that abused and exploited young girls, when he was head of public prosecutions. An estimated 1,400 girls were exploited in the northern town of Rotherham by “grooming gangs” made up largely of British Pakistani men in cases that date back to before 2010. Similar gangs were also found to be operating in other towns and cities in England, including Oldham and Telford.

The prime minister noted that when he was director of the Crown Prosecution Service, between 2008 and 2013, his office brought the first case against an Asian grooming gang and drafted new guidelines for the mandatory reporting of child sex offenses. He had tackled the scandal “head on,” he said.

“There’s nothing secret about being director of public prosecutions,” Mr. Starmer said. “Every single case I prosecuted went to court, was looked at by a judge.”

Mr. Musk has repeatedly asserted, without evidence, that Mr. Starmer had covered up the abuses. He also claimed that Jess Phillips, the Labour government’s under secretary for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, was a “rape genocide apologist” because she pushed back on calls for a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, a town near Manchester.