It’s trouble in paradise for Labour HQ after Donald Trump unleashed a furious legal complaint, accusing the Party of “blatant foreign interference” in the election. The fallout stems from Labour staff organising a trip for nearly 100 activists to campaign for Kamala Harris. Trump’s camp are up in arms, claiming Labour has been funnelling “illegal foreign campaign contributions” and branding the party as “far-Left” for pushing Harris’ dangerously “liberal” agenda. Friends across the Pond are not amused…
Starmer is now desperately trying to salvage the situation, insisting he can still have a “good relationship” with Trump despite this. Environmental Secretary Steve Reed was shoved onto the morning media round for damage control, downplaying the debacle by saying, “it’s not unusual for supporters of a party in one country to go and campaign for a sister party in another.” Unlikely that line will reassure The Donald…
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, one of Trump’s close allies, has thrown more fuel on the fire by declaring “war” on a Labour-linked campaign group – Morgan McSweeney among its ex-directors – aimed at tackling online misinformation after one of its main missions was revealed to be “Kill Musk’s Twitter”. With Trump rising in the polls, the special relationship will be in for a bumpy ride if he ends up back in the White House…
Elon Musk continues on his mission to point out woke British politics, rinsing the SNP for claiming there are 24 genders. The Nats’ official guidance includes terms like “genderqueer,” for anyone who identifies as “other than male or female” or a “combination” of both, and “pangender,” for those who feel “all possible genders at once.” A creative way to look busy…
🥜
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 21, 2024
J.K. Rowling jumped into the fray on X, declaring that the “Scottish endarkenment gathers pace” in response to the long list. Elon summed it up with a “nuts” emoji. Pun intended?
Josh Simons, newly elected MP for Makerfield and close ally of Starmer, is continuing his new campaign against Elon Musk’s Twitter. Simons complains that Musk’s tweets are too visible to people and claims that letting consumers who are disattisfied leave voluntarily is not enough:
“Waiting for Westminster to voluntarily quit X risks a very long wait… it’s a mistake to focus on individual choices… the question has to be: What do we expect of this platform?
Rising star Simons, who headed up Starmerite think tank Labour Together before his election and is now trying to get himself onto the Technology Select Committee, complained on Politics Live: “I do not want any man or woman to have that kind of power over our public debate.” Helpfully ignoring that Twitter closely managed reams of content before it was taken over by Musk…
He went on to spell out his personal dislike of Musk:
“Musk is a problem. I don’t like him. But Musk is symptomatic of the fact that he has this power… Think of the algorithm like a newspaper editor. Newspaper editors have values, they have standards, they have integrity. The people who build the algorithms should have the same values and integrity and professional standards.”
The key difference between a democratised social media and the legacy dead tree press is, of course, that editors and hacks operate in collusion with politicians. Now that information is no longer so closely controlled authoritarian politicians are itching to regulate a free social media to exctinction…
Starmer supplied a stodgy speech on investment to the International Investment Summit. Lobby hacks have enthusiastically written up his plegdge to “rip up” regulation and cut bureaucracy – while Labour’s new legislation does largely the opposite…
After the speech Starmer sat in for a 30-minute Q&A with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, whose first comment was: “I was shocked when Labour said it was in favour of growth.” Starmer sulkily replied that “wealth creation is the number one mission of a Labour government”…
The Q&A was watched live on LinkedIn, where it was hosted, by a pitiful average of 440 people. Hilariously about 20 minutes of the entire chat was taken up by AI as business leaders constantly rediverted to the topic. Starmer just repeatedly said it’s a “real game-changer.” Maybe there was a good reason Sunak bothered to invite Elon Musk to chat about the new technology – especially as Musk has just invented AI-powered robots…
Labour has finally found a line on Elon Musk’s non-invitation to Starmer and Reeves’ investment summit: ‘He doesn’t have anything to invest.’ Eh?
Ministers have spent the weekend refusing to comment on whether he was even invited. Now Peter Kyle has been asked in every interview on the morning round why the “most successful businessman in the world” didn’t cop an invite to the summit. His response is that “Elon Musk doesn’t have a global investment programme that’s underway at the moment.” Just the odd invention or two…
That’s different from Labour’s previous line, which also went on about tech investment, on the summit’s purpose:
“The summit is an opportunity to meaningfully engage with the world’s leading businesses and investors, and to continue to build long-term relationships that will drive investment into the UK in the months and years ahead.”
So Labour doesn’t feel the need to meaningfully engage with Musk. Is it because he said mean things about Keir on Twitter?
While left-wing pundits have been busy constantly complaining about Twitter under Musk, the billionaire inventor has designed the future of automation. Creators gonna create…
Over at Warner Bros Studios near L.A. Musk got to the stage in a new Tesla “Cybercab,” the world’s first fully automated taxi with no steering wheel and no-plug charging – all for less than $30,000. The Tesla owner says it’ll be ready to ship in 2026. The BBC’s coverage has naturally poured cold water on the innovation by immediately citing regulator and health and safety concerns…
Musk also introduced the “Robovan” to carry 20 people (or cargo) to travel at 5 cents per mile. Tesla says the vehicles can be 10 times safer than humans and drive five to 10 times longer. A revolution…
Optimus just poured a drink and didn’t ask for a 25% tip on an iPad.
Just put $10M more into Tesla stock
— Chris Bakke (@ChrisJBakke) October 11, 2024
Attendees were served drinks by Telsa’s new “Optimus” robots. Billed as an “autonomous assistant, humanoid friend,” they can “do anything you want” for around $20,000 each. Musk says it will be “the biggest product ever, of any kind.” Four million people watched the unveiling on Twitter alone…
Parliamentary staffers are looking worried. One MP asks Guido: “Can the robot do casework?”
