Musk is ‘misjudged and certainly misinformed’ over UK grooming attacks, says senior minister
Associated PressLONDON — A senior British politician pushed back Friday on Elon Musk’s criticism of the government’s handling of a historic child grooming scandal. Though Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Musk’s views were was “misjudged and certainly misinformed,” he urged the world’s richest man and close confidant of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to work with the government on tackling the issue of child sexual exploitation. A 2022 report into safeguarding measures in Oldham between 2011 and 2014 found that children were failed by local agencies, but that there was no cover-up despite “legitimate concerns” that the far-right would capitalize on “the high-profile convictions of predominantly Pakistani offenders across the country.” Musk has also targeted British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who he claimed had failed to bring what many term “rape gangs” to justice when he was the director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013. The scandals, Musk said Friday, represent a “massive crime against humanity.” Streeting told ITV News that the government took child sexual exploitation “incredibly seriously” and that it was supportive of an inquiry into the Oldham scandal, but that it should be led locally. Musk has also compared British attempts to weed out online misinformation to the Soviet Union, while during summer anti-immigrant violence across the U.K. he tweeted that “civil war is inevitable.” Musk also backed calls Friday for a U.K. general election, barely six months after the last one.