By Elizabeth Piper and Sachin Ravikumar
LONDON (Reuters) -Keir Starmer defended his work as Britain’s top prosecutor on Monday, refusing to mention U.S. billionaire Elon Musk by name but addressing his criticism that, long before he became prime minister, he had failed to prosecute gangs who sexually abused girls.
Musk, a close ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, has spent days posting messages on his social media site X accusing Starmer of what he said was a failure to prosecute gangs of men, mostly of a South Asian background, who raped young girls when he was director of public prosecutions (DPP) between 2008 and 2013.
Starmer declined to address some of Musk’s other messages on X – including a poll asking whether the United States should liberate the UK from its “tyrannical government” – but strongly defended his record as DPP, saying he had overcome resistance to tackling the allegations by reopening cases.
“When I was chief prosecutor for five years, I tackled that head-on … and that’s why I reopened cases that had been closed and supposedly finished. I brought the first major prosecution of an Asian grooming gang … I changed the whole prosecution approach,” he told a press conference, visibly angry.
“Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims, they are interested in themselves.”
Starmer has refrained from commenting on Musk’s increasingly critical comments of his tenure, but his impatience was clear when he tackled the allegations over cases involving gangs who systematically groomed and raped girls over a period of years, some of which coincided with his time as DPP.
A 2014 inquiry found at least 1,400 children were subjected to sexual exploitation in Rotherham, northern England, between 1997 and 2013.
FARAGE ALSO MUSK TARGET
Saying he was making a more general point rather than directly addressing Musk’s comments, he also defended his safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, whom the U.S. billionaire described as a “rape genocide apologist” in another message.
“Those attacking Jess Phillips, who I am proud to call a colleague and a friend, aren’t protecting victims,” he said.
“I am prepared to call out this for what it is … When the poison of the far right leads to serious threats … in my book, a line has been crossed.”
Starmer had wanted to discuss his plans to bring down waiting lists in Britain’s public health service, promising to hit the so-called 18-week referral-to-treatment target by the end of this parliament, due to end in a new election in 2029.
He sees reforming the National Health Service as one way to win over voters critical of his first months in power, when he limited winter fuel payments to some pensioners and set out the highest tax-raising budget since 1993.
But Musk’s comments on the gangs and calls from the opposition Conservatives to launch an inquiry into those cases yet again overshadowed the prime minister’s attempts to reclaim the narrative and set out his government’s priorities.
Starmer is not Musk’s only focus. On Sunday, Musk said Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage should quit as leader of Britain’s right-wing Reform Party.
He has also endorsed the Alternative for Germany party, an anti-immigration, anti-Islamic party labelled as right-wing extremist by German security services, before a national election.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Sachin Ravikumar; Writing by Catarina Demony and Elizabeth Piper; Editing by William James and Alison Williams)
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