THERE is no foundation for Elon Musk’s allegations about how Gordon Brown dealt with child grooming gangs, a spokesperson for the former Labour prime minister said.
It comes after a flurry of posts by Musk on his social media site, Twitter/X, where he accused the former Labour prime minister 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.
Earlier on Monday, Musk suggested Keir Starmer was “complicit in the crimes” of child sex offenders based on his record in tackling historical grooming gang cases as director of public prosecutions (DPP), and in a separate post added: “Prison for Starmer.”
Responding to the claims, a spokesperson for Brown said: “There is no basis for such allegations at all. They are a complete fabrication.
"There is no foundation whatsoever for alleging that Mr Brown sent, approved or was in any way involved with issuing a circular or statement to the police because it did not happen.
“The original source of this allegations has expressly accepted Mr Brown was not involved at all. Moreover, there is no evidence that such words or actions now attributed to him by Elon Musk have ever been used by Mr Brown, because he neither said nor did them.
“When it comes to the exploitation and abuse of children and young women by sex grooming gangs, the priority for all people in public life should be to secure justice for the survivors, punishment for the perpetrators, and action at local and national level to ensure that these kind of horrific crimes can never be allowed to happen again.
“But that collective endeavour is undermined when some individuals and media outlets instead propagate outright lies about the reasons that these crimes happened in the past.”
The row prompted by Musk’s (above) comments has seen Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch call for a “full national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal”. David Greenwood, a solicitor who works on child abuse cases, said this would not be "productive" as an inquiry into the institutional response to exploitation has already happened.
She also defended shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick after he tweeted that “importing hundreds of thousands of people from alien cultures, who possess medieval attitudes towards women” had led to the scandal.
Starmer accused the Tories of “amplifying what the far-right is saying” and “jumping on the bandwagon” to gain attention, saying Badenoch had failed to implement the recommendations of Professor Alexis Jay’s 2022 report on child sexual abuse.
He said also threats made against MPs such as Jess Phillips following Musk's comments meant “in my book, a line has been crossed”.
Tesla owner Musk had claimed safeguarding minister Phillips “deserves to be in prison” for denying requests for the Home Office to lead a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, Greater Manchester, and called her a “rape genocide apologist”.