After recent rumours he was mulling a $100 million donation to Reform, Musk now says he would back an alternative right-wing party.
Elon Musk has expressed interest in backing an alternative to Reform UK, just months after saying he was considering donating $100 million to Nigel Farage’s party.
According to the Financial Times, allies of the tech billionaire have now said that he would consider supporting “a credible alternative party”.
Last week, internal fighting broke out between Rupert Lowe and Farage. In an article in the Daily Mail published last Thursday, Lowe voiced doubts about whether Farage has what it takes to be prime minister.
He also criticised Farage for acting like a “messiah” and said he needs to learn to delegate.
Farage suspended Lowe from the party on Friday, and Reform UK subsequently reported the Great Yarmouth MP to the police over accusations of bullying two female staff members and making threats of violence towards the party’s chair, Zia Yusuf.
Former Brexit party MEP Ben Habib, an outspoken critic of Farage, has refused to rule out setting up a breakaway party with Rupert Lowe, who he said he is ‘constantly in touch’ with.
Lowe has said he is “keeping his options open”, but commented that he used to be a Tory years ago, and that he gets on well with a lot of Tory MPs.
After spending $288 million on helping elect Trump and other Republicans in 2024, the world’s richest man started involving himself in UK and European politics.
In December last year, Farage and Reform UK’s treasurer Nick Candy flew out to the US to meet Musk at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Farage and Candy declared that their “special relationship” with the billionaire was “alive and well”.
In January, Musk was tweeting continuously about UK politics, calling for Tommy Robinson to be freed from prison and alleging that Keir Starmer and safeguarding minister Jess Phillips failed to hold leaders of sexual grooming gangs in England to account because perpetrators were of Pakistani origin.
Farage responded to Musk’s support for Robinson, stating that he didn’t want far-right agitator to join Reform. Musk later said he didn’t think Farage had what it takes to be Reform’s leader and backed Lowe as a potential replacement.
A Financial Times analysis of Musk’s tweets in the first week of January found that 225 out of the tech billionaire’s 616 tweets and retweets in that period were about UK politics.
After taking over as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk stopped tweeting as much about UK politics and said it would be more complicated to make a donation to Reform.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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