Elon Musk’s recent obsession with UK politics is being fuelled by a series of popular accounts on his social media platform X, which the billionaire appears to be turning to for information on the grooming gangs scandal and Sir Keir Starmer’s track record as a prosecutor.

An analysis of the entrepreneur’s feed by the Financial Times found that Musk — whose attacks on the British prime minister and senior politicians have become more scathing over the past week — has amplified or responded to a handful of X accounts that have posted extensively about the handling of historic sex crimes in the country. 

They include Viségrad 24 — an account with more than 1.2mn followers run by British-born Stefan Tompson — social media personality Mario Nawfal, and Malaysian influencer Ian Miles Cheong, alongside several less popular right-leaning accounts purportedly based in the UK.

Posts by the accounts that Musk has engaged with blamed the “British political elite” for covering up the scandal, and referred to “horrific failures” by prosecutors, alleging they “turned a blind eye to the raping of children”.

The accounts cited snippets from reports by British newspapers, and summarised findings from previous inquiries into the matter, mostly without linking to the source material or providing further context.

They also highlighted isolated passages from a book called Easy Meat: Multiculturalism, Islam And Child Sex Slavery, without naming the publication. One post linked to testimony by Telford survivor Samantha Smith saying she was asked by the British police if she consented to sexual activity, even though she was a five-year-old when first abused.

The posts seem to have encouraged Musk — who has more than 211mn followers on X and has used his online pulpit to support conservative cultural stances — to step up his attacks on Starmer and UK safeguarding minister Jess Phillips over the past week, alleging they failed to hold leaders of sexual grooming gangs in England to account because the perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage.

Musk’s posts have rocketed the grooming scandal to the top of the news agenda in the UK and led to renewed calls for action, with Conservative MPs attempting to force a vote on whether to hold a new inquiry. Professor Alexis Jay, chair of the original inquiry, has been drawn in, saying it would be better to implement the measures already recommended.

Musk, the world’s richest man, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Saturday, Nawfal posted that Phillips “nixed a broader investigation into Oldham’s rape gangs”, to which Musk responded calling her a “wicked witch”. He also replied to an earlier post by the influencer — who frequently jumps on significant news developments and with whom Musk has long engaged — that claimed “cultural sensitivities” were prioritised over pursuing justice, calling the alleged cover-up “unconscionable”.

In the past week, Musk has reposted Nawfal almost 40 times. The 53-year-old billionaire has posted or reposted 616 times on X during the same period, at least 225 of which were about UK politics, according to FT analysis as of Wednesday morning. Including replies, he has posted more than 1180 times in seven days.

Musk, who spent more than $250mn supporting Donald Trump’s campaign, has been an almost constant presence at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago home over the past two months, from where he has joined calls with world leaders and criticised the governments of Germany and Canada.

He has claimed that Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions in England and Wales, was “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes”. 

He also called for the King to dissolve parliament and call new elections.

One person who interacted with Musk this week said he had not been relying on conversations with a UK source for his information, but preferred to do his own research online. Others formerly close to the billionaire said that they believed his outrage was largely driven by posts from social media accounts that Musk does not directly follow, but that appear on his algorithmically curated “for you” feed on X.

Questions about which individuals or organisations are colouring Musk’s take on the UK government have also preoccupied some British officials. 

Several believe that a small cast of conservative-leaning British commentators and analysts based in the US are shaping views about the UK among the wider milieu of Trump’s allies.

“There is a pretty right-wing libertarian UK émigré network in the US who are feeding a lot of this,” said one British government official, adding that they were free speech advocates linked to right-wing US think tanks that are projecting an image of the UK as “uber woke”.

The officials said they include Douglas Murray, a neoconservative author who has written books on western decline and “Islamophilia,” who Musk has referred to in tweets on the grooming scandal, and Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the DC-based Heritage Foundation.

A second UK official said that the growth of Islam in the UK was another key theme pushed by influential US-based British commentators, highlighting that UK media stories last month about “Muhammad” becoming the most popular boy’s name in England and Wales were shared widely among Maga figures on X and other social media sites. 

In the past week, Musk has also amplified posts on the grooming scandal by former prime minister Liz Truss, former Labour MP Kate Hoey, former Reform politician Ben Habib and people linked to broadcaster GB News. He has amplified several posts by Reform MP Rupert Lowe, who he has suggested should replace Nigel Farage as the head of the party.

But Musk has also endorsed posts from smaller accounts, including some supporters of far-right figure Tommy Robinson, which have claimed that Starmer “has no sympathy whatsoever for the English working class”, among other allegations. None of the accounts appear to be followed by Musk.

X allows users to switch between a feed of the accounts they follow only, and an algorithmic feed, dubbed “For You”, showing content that might match their interests and previous activity. The more Musk engages with content about the UK from the far right or niche sources, the more he will be served similar content in his “For You” page, according to experts. 

“Musk has seemingly become the first tech leader to fall down the rabbit hole of radicalisation by his own product,” said Bruce Daisley, former head of Twitter’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

He said that TikTok, which also has a version of the algorithmically curated “For You” page, “is far more optimised for fun, surprise and amusement”. Meanwhile Musk “simultaneously says ‘let’s post more positive stuff’ then retweets extremists from Britain First and Tommy Robinson,” he added.

Dr Jen Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, who focuses on social media and extremism, said the ease with which users can pay for X’s subscription service, and consequently be featured more prominently in its users’ feeds, has played a major role in amplifying accounts that post inaccurate information.

“On the algorithmic side, I think a really important feature is the boosting of the blue checks,” she said, referring to the X users with a subscription to X Premium, signified by a blue tick on their profiles. The change to the X verification process by Musk meant that he was more likely to see posts from people who “share his increasingly radical ideology”, Golbeck added.

On Tuesday, Musk said that he had a personal reason to be interested in the UK, posting that his British grandmother, Cora Amelia Robinson, “grew up very poor in England” and was important to him as a child.

“My Nana was one of the poor working-class girls with no one to protect her who might have been abducted in present day Britain,” Musk claimed.

WASHINGTON — When the temperature plunges, the de-icing crews go to work.

First the big truck pulls up alongside a plane. Then the bucket operator sprays the wings, tail and fuselage with a mixture of hot fluids that melts ice so the jet can take off safely.

“It’s just one of those frustrating times of year,” said Chris Manno, a retired airline pilot who spent 35 years at American Airlines. “Everything’s being done safely. There’s no good way to do it, other than slowly.”

This has been a challenging week for air travelers, as a major winter storm forced airlines to cancel thousands of flights and delay thousands more. Those problems were especially acute at airports around the nation’s capital, which saw more than half a foot of snow. A second storm is forecast to bring more precipitation to major airports in Dallas and Atlanta later this week.

The winter weather leaves airlines no choice but to de-ice planes before takeoff in order to keep them in the air, because even a small amount of ice on the wings can lead to serious problems.

“Not just heavy snow but actually very thin layers of frost can also have a very negative effect on lift,” said Kathleen Bangs, a former commercial airline pilot who is now a spokesperson for FlightAware, the flight-tracking website. 

A Frontier Airlines plane approaches a de-icing station before takeoff in Denver in this file photo. Two powerful winter storms are disrupting the U.S. air travel system this week.

Brennan Linsley/AP

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“Aircraft can be rolling down the runway,” Bangs explained. “And they will accelerate, and frequently get to liftoff speed. But when they try to take off, or they do get just a few feet off the ground, they’ll lose substantial lift, and the aircraft will no longer be able to fly.”

The de-icing process typically takes about 20 minutes for a smaller plane, Manno said. For larger jets, de-icing can add a delay of up to 40 minutes or more to each flight.

“It’s kind of a big logistics task,” he said. “Most airlines are doing a pretty good job of handling that. It’s just, it’s a slow process, and it has to be done right.”

If it’s not done right, the results can be catastrophic. In January 1982, an Air Florida jet crashed into the Potomac River moments after taking off from what was then called Washington National Airport, killing most of the passengers and crew on board. That accident – along with the crash of a USAir jet in New York City a decade later – led to more rigorous standards for de-icing.

Airlines now typically use two different types of chemical mixtures, depending on the situation: de-icing fluid and anti-icing fluid. De-icing fluid is heated to 140 degrees to remove frost, snow and ice from the wings and other critical surfaces, while anti-icing fluid prevents ice from forming. Glycol is the key ingredient in both fluids.

While the technology behind de-icing has improved over the years, some things about the job have not changed.

“You’re in the elements. It’s snowing. You can barely see sometimes,” said Thomas Stevenson, a de-icer for Southwest Airlines based in Denver, in a video the company posted on YouTube. “It definitely gets cold. But I mean, that’s something you kind of signed up for when you took the job.”

His colleague, Jamie Martinez, says it’s an “awesome responsibility” to make sure a full plane carrying more than 140 passengers and crew members is ready for takeoff.

“We really try to consider every airplane as having a family member on that airplane,” Martinez said. “And that’s what we keep in mind to make sure that we’re doing the job correctly.”

It’s not just cold-weather climates where airlines have to worry about de-icing. It’s also a concern in warmer climates like Texas, Georgia and Florida.

“It is a necessity even this far down south,” said John Murphy, the assistant director of airside operations at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. He says the airport has already seen more than a dozen days this winter when planes have required de-icing – even without any significant snowfall.

The airport is preparing for a major winter storm later this week that’s forecast to bring snow or freezing rain to a wide stretch of the South from Dallas to Atlanta. Murphy expects de-icing will once again be necessary.

“So you could see delays of upwards of an hour. That’s normal,” he said. “The name of the game is always safety.”

Those delays can be frustrating for travelers. But Kathleen Bangs with FlightAware says U.S. airlines and airports deserve credit for their performance during this week’s storm — even though thousands of flights were canceled or delayed. 

“The truth is, they kept going. They kept operating. They did it safely,” she said. “You do the best you can. I mean, when you’ve got a foot of snow falling in some places, or ice covered runways, there’s you know, there’s a lot of places around the world that just shut down and don’t operate at all.”