Tesla CEO Elon Musk may be on the verge of escalating his war of words with Prime Minister Keir Starmer by funding Nigel Farage to the tune of £80 million. To put that figure into context, in the second quarter of 2024, which included a general election campaign, all British political parties combined chalked up donations of just £55 million.
Farage’s Reform Party received the third highest vote share at this year’s general election, with 14% of the vote, but is only the seventh largest party in parliament due to the “First Past The Post” electoral system.
Funding Farage would not only be a blow to Keir Starmer, who Musk has repeatedly clashed with, but to Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party.
Since his acquisition of Twitter (now X) in 2022, Musk has become increasingly involved in the political fray and this year declared himself to be ‘all in’ for Donald Trump. In short, he has aligned himself with the populist right of politics rather than the establishment right represented by the Tory party.
Like Musk, Farage is also known to be close to Trump. In 2016 the pair were famously photographed together in a golden elevator, with both being seen as populist leaders who shocked the system with their unexpected victories that year in the Brexit referendum and in the presidential election. Farage even went so far as to suggest that Brexit paved the way for the first Trump victory.
On Saturday, Farage told the Times that he did not know if Musk intends a donation of any kind, but did say that he was ‘in touch’ and that Musk is ‘very supportive of my policy positions’.
Musk himself has yet to comment, although as ever, he has been posting ambiguous tweets on his platform X. In response to a tweet that said, ‘Reform will win the next election.’, Musk simply tweeted ‘Yes’, although whether this was endorsement or prediction is unclear.
Should Musk proceed with the rumoured donation, it could provide Reform UK with an opportunity, not only to saturate the airwaves, but to up its ground game around the country and convert more of its vote share into seats at the next election, which must be held by 2029.
British election law makes donations from foreign citizens illegal. Should the South African-born Musk, who also holds Canadian and US citizenship, make a move of this kind, it would likely be through a British subsidiary of one of his companies.
Earlier this year Musk established America Pac, a political action committee that campaigned for the re-election of Donald Trump. The group spent over $200 million on campaigning, around half of which was from Musk himself.
Following Trump’s re-election last month, it was announced that Musk will be involved in cutting waste in the US federal government at a newly created Department of Government Efficiency.
