The prime minister has hardly ever appeared so passionate as when he answered a query from Sky’s Beth Rigby on Elon Musk’s vitriolic feedback about safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who Musk described as a “witch” who ought to go to jail.
Sir Keir Starmer was talking at a press convention following a giant new 12 months speech on the federal government’s plans to convey down NHS ready lists – and whereas we have been anticipating him to take the chance to rebut Musk’s inflammatory posts on the grooming gangs, he set out his place with all weapons blazing.
After days of digital silence – a vacuum crammed on-line by but extra outlandish, defamatory feedback – Sir Keir mounted a passionate defence of his personal and Ms Phillips’ actions and launched a blistering assault on Kemi Badenoch, too. It felt like fairly a second for the PM.
He described little one sexual exploitation as “utterly sickening” and defended his position as chief prosecutor tackling that “head on” – reopening circumstances that had been closed, finishing up the “first major prosecution by an Asian grooming gang”, and altering the way in which the CPS handled the problem.
He praised the monitor report of Ms Phillips in combating for the rights of kid victims of sexual abuse, claiming she had “done a thousand times more” than any of her critics, and condemning the “poison of the far right” which had led to critical threats in opposition to her.
However relatively than focus his critique on Musk himself – his actual ire was directed on the Tory social gathering.
“A line has been crossed”, he stated, criticising “politicians jumping on the bandwagon just to get attention… so desperate for attention they’re amplifying what the far right is saying”.
He later went on to single out the “leader of the opposition” – claiming that “only a few months ago it would have been unthinkable” for somebody in Ms Badenoch’s place to not denounce and distance themselves from the feedback made to Ms Phillips.
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5:03
PM on Musk: A line has been crossed
The Conservatives have clearly been beneath growing strain from Reform UK because the election.
Whereas supporters welcomed Ms Badenoch’s tweet final week calling for a nationwide public inquiry into what she described because the “rape gang scandals”, others noticed it as scrambling to meet up with the narrative set by Musk and Reform UK.
That will surely appear to be the evaluation of the prime minister, who sounded genuinely indignant in denouncing what he described because the “poison of the far right” infecting politics and calling for a dialogue based mostly on “facts and truth not on lies”.
He repeatedly hit out on the Conservatives’ failure to implement the 20 suggestions of the Impartial Inquiry into Youngster Sexual Abuse, although Labour haven’t but carried out so both. He insisted they’re working at pace to ship them.
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Musk ‘unwell knowledgeable’ on grooming gangs, Wes Streeting says
We do not typically hear the lawyerly Sir Keir talking with such fireplace in his stomach and it was fairly a gear change from the relatively extra workmanlike speech which preceded it, regardless of the actual fact it was his large new 12 months second to set out his plans for his primary precedence – the NHS.
Sir Keir described his work on the NHS as “the cornerstone” of his work “rebuilding our country”, speaking at size about his love for the nationwide well being service, his plans for expanded group diagnostic centres, the NHS app, the remodeling energy of AI, and an increasing position of the personal sector.
It was a speech about insurance policies which may, in the event that they work, make an actual distinction to individuals’s lives throughout the nation.
However, in time to come back, what will probably be remembered will certainly be his response to the web storm brewed by Musk and Reform UK – and harnessed by the Conservatives.
