Kemi Badenoch has claimed she is a “enormous fan” of the world’s richest man, X proprietor Elon Musk, in a brand new interview.
The Tory management hopeful and shadow housing secretary revealed that she helps the controversial determine due to his advocacy of freedom of speech.
Chatting with The Spectator, she mentioned: “I believe Elon Musk has been a implausible factor for freedom of speech. I’ll maintain my hand up and say, I’m an enormous fan of Elon Musk.
“I take a look at Twitter earlier than he took over and after: there may be much more free speech.
She continued: “Sure, there are various, many extra issues that I see on X, as he calls it, that I don’t like.
“However I additionally know that views usually are not suppressed the way in which that they had been, that there was a cultural institution – that was very left – that managed numerous discourse on that platform.”
Musk has turned X (previously Twitter) the other way up since his takeover nearly two years in the past.
The billionaire, who’s a vocal Donald Trump supporter, reinstated a number of beforehand banned accounts together with that of the previous US president, and launched a subscription service to the platform.
Extra just lately, he made headlines when he repeated baseless conspiracy theories a couple of “two-tier” policing system within the UK, suggesting the far-right rioters seen in August ended up with a harsher punishment in comparison with earlier pro-Palestine demonstrators.
He was additionally slapped down by No.10 when he claimed “civil conflict is inevitable” within the UK. Downing Avenue mentioned: “There’s no justification for feedback like that.”
Badenoch, who’s at present competing towards frontrunner Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat for the title of Tory chief, was the one management hopeful to announce help for Musk in her interview with the Spectator.
Jenrick mentioned he was “not going to be reserving a tête-à-tête with Elon Musk any time quickly”, whereas Cleverly mentioned you need to be “very, very cautious about curbing voices that you simply disagree with”.
Tugendhat appeared to query how Musk has dealt with X, saying: “If you’re operating a platform that’s fully dominated by nameless bots, is that freedom of speech – or simply propaganda?
“If you’re allowed to say no matter you want however you set your title to it, that’s freedom of speech. And it must be defended, completely.”
