Keir Starmer has said the online debate about child sexual exploitation was based on lies, with politicians “jumping on the bandwagon”.
Responding to questions about a slew of social media posts from Tesla owner Elon Musk, the Prime Minister said “a line has been crossed” when safeguarding minister Jess Phillips and others receive serious threats as a result of the “poison of the far-right”.
Starmer’s comments follow a flurry of posts by Musk on his social media site X, in which the billionaire claimed Ms Phillips “deserves to be in prison” and called her a “rape genocide apologist” for denying requests for the Home Office to lead a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham.
Earlier on Monday, Musk suggested the Prime Minister was “complicit in the crimes” of child sex offenders, and in a separate post added: “Prison for Starmer.”
He also accused former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown of having “committed an unforgivable crime against the British people” and “sold those little girls for votes”, over his handling of grooming gangs while in office.
Asked about Musk’s posts to his 210 million followers following a speech at Epsom Hospital in Surrey, the Prime Minister said: “Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims, they are interested in themselves.”
He went on to criticise the response of senior Conservatives to Musk’s comments, saying he was “concerned about where the Tory party is going on this”.
He said: “I think only a few months ago, it would have been unthinkable for things to have been said about Jess Phillips (that) were said recently without all political parties and the leader of the opposition calling it out in terms.”
Starmer also defended his own record on tackling grooming gangs, saying he had dealt with the problem “head-on” as director of public prosecutions.
He said: “I reopened cases that had been closed and supposedly finished, I brought the first major prosecution of an Asian grooming gang – in the particular case it was in Rochdale, but it was the first of its kind, there were many that then followed that format.
“We changed, or I changed, the whole prosecution approach, because I wanted to challenge and did challenge the myths and stereotypes that were stopping those victims being heard.”
He added: “When I left office, we had the highest number of child sexual abuse cases being prosecuted on record. Now that record is not secret. As a public servant, it’s there for all of you, for everybody to see.
To sign up to the Daily Record Politics newsletter, click here