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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology

British politics are not Elon Musk’s to toy with

Nigel Farage speaks on his mobile phone ahead of a general election campaign event in Doncaster, northern England on 11 December 2019
‘Musk has nothing to lose with this good cop/bad cop ploy, and Farage [pictured] everything to gain.’ Photograph: Lindsey Parnaby/AFP/Getty Images

Your article (Elon Musk turns on Nigel Farage and calls for new leader of Reform, 5 January) raises fascinating insights as to how international interests play an ever more direct role in the British political system. Discretion is not assured. What is becoming clear is that the likes of Nigel Farage seem to have dispensed with the illusion that Brexit was about political independence. Instead, the need to comply with far-right US agendas, the infantile inconsistencies of rogue James-Bond-type billionaires, and to accept millions of pounds in overseas income are openly accepted.

The positioning of Reform UK’s development in relation to overseas interests is at odds with the earlier rhetoric of national sovereignty. If ever there were a moment of amnesia in British politics, it is now. Given this focusing on the idiosyncratic turns of overseas business people, perhaps the government can seize the moment and complete an aspect of Brexit’s failed project that did have one moral feature: ensuring that it was the British people who should finance British politics.

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