Musk excluded from UK investment summit after riot controversy
Elon Musk was not invited to this year's International Investment Summit, which the British government organised. According to the BBC, the most likely reason was his internet posts regarding anti-immigrant riots in the country.
26 Sep 2024 | updated: 26 September 2024 12:53
The riots occurred in early August after a knife attack in Southport, in which three girls attending dance classes were killed. Musk reacted to the riots with a post on platform X, predicting a civil war in the United Kingdom and attacking Prime Minister Keir Starmer multiple times.
At the October summit, the head of the British government hopes to attract investments worth tens of billions of pounds.
Musk, the richest person in the world, attended last year’s summit in November and met with then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Musk presented a conspiracy theory. Ministers reacted
During the August riots, Musk posted and then deleted on X a post promoting a conspiracy theory that the United Kingdom was building "detainment camps" on the Falkland Islands for riot participants. British ministers deemed this statement "totally unjustifiable" and "pretty deplorable".
"The BBC understands this is why he has not been invited to join hundreds of the world’s biggest investors at the event on 14 October," the station said.
Under the British Conservative government, Musk, who owns or heads X, Tesla, and SpaceX, visited several sites in the United Kingdom where a giant car and battery factory could be built. Earlier, he told journalists that he opened a factory in Germany, not in the United Kingdom, due to Brexit.
Bloomberg estimates that 53-year-old Musk has a fortune worth £170 billion. These calculations are based on Tesla's stock price (Musk owns 13% of the shares).
Born in Pretoria in the Republic of South Africa, Musk, who became a United States citizen in 2002, has long resisted attempts to define his political views, declaring himself "half-Democrat, half-Republican," "politically moderate," and "independent". He claims that in presidential elections, he voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and—reluctantly—Joe Biden, all Democrats.
In recent years, however, he has increasingly leaned towards Republican Donald Trump. After an assassination attempt on the former president, he officially endorsed Trump in this year's election campaign.
