Then prime minister Rishi Sunak (left) and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX in-conversation in central London, November 2, 2023
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They [the UK Conservative Party or ‘Tories’] disregard the evidence of the inquiry they set up, which noted that child abuse was endemic in England and Wales (a separate inquiry is ongoing for Scotland); was enabled, covered up or ignored in multiple contexts from churches to schools, council-run care homes and when organised by criminal gangs; and is on the increase because of the rise in online pornography, grooming and pimping.
They instead frame the question in racist terms. Shadow home secretary Chris Philps asks for an inquiry to ask why grooming gangs are “overwhelmingly of south Asian background.” Shadow safeguarding minister Alicia Kearns calls on Phillips to release the “ethnicity data.”
They hype up a far-right trope about Asian, and specifically Muslim, grooming gangs that their own government reports disproved. Musk seizes on this too, retweeting claims Phillips is refusing to open an inquiry into “Muslim grooming gangs.”
Musk’s role is novel and dangerous. The richest man on Earth is incendiary, attacking Phillips as a “rape genocide apologist” and demanding that the King dissolve Parliament to protect children from the Labour government.
So far so Musk, but the Conservatives seem happy to take attack lines from the toxic tech tycoon and turn his transient fixations into British political weather.
Musk is soon to be a high-ranking member of the US government, which Keir Starmer is as ready to fawn on as his predecessors. Labour should stand up to this abuse or it will be humiliated, to the benefit — as Musk intends — of the British far right he openly supports.
That means rejecting the racist weaponisation of the issue.
Elon Musk and the wife of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) applaud during a House Republican Conference meeting on November 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“If there was ever a moment when progressives needed to communicate our vision to the people of our country, this is that time,” wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Despair is not an option.”
A Bloomberg analysis of billionaire wealth published Tuesday found that the combined fortunes of the 500 richest people on the planet surpassed $10 trillion this year, a finding that came shortly after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sandersissued an urgent call to action to prevent the emergence of “an oligarchic and authoritarian society.”
The new analysis notes that the world’s top 500 billionaires “got vastly richer” this year with the help of “an indomitable rally in U.S. technology stocks.”
Just eight billionaires—Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin—added more than $600 billion to their collective wealth in 2024 and accounted for 43% of the $1.5 trillion increase in net worth among the world’s 500 richest people, according to Bloomberg.
“But it was Musk—the so-called ‘first buddy’ of President-elect Donald Trump after unprecedented support for his reelection campaign—who dominated the world’s wealthiest in 2024,” Bloomberg observed, adding that Trump himself also saw his fortune surge to a record high this year, “boosted by the performance of his majority stake in Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.”
Musk’s use of his enormous fortune to influence the U.S. political system—including via his purchase of one of the world’s largest social media platforms and donations to Trump’s 2024 campaign—amplified existing concerns about the corrosive impact of massive wealth concentration on democracy.
“They do not believe in democracy—the right of ordinary people to control their own futures. They firmly believe that the rich and powerful should determine the future.”
In an email to supporters on Monday, Sanders (I-Vt.) called the rapid shift toward oligarchy in the U.S. “the defining issue of our time,” warning that billionaires have come to increasingly dominate not only “our economic life, but the information we consume and our politics as well.”
“A manifestation of the current moment is the rise of Elon Musk, and all that he stands for,” Sanders wrote, pointing to Musk’s outsize influence on the 2024 election and his key role in shaping Trump’s billionaire-dominated Cabinet.
“But it’s not just Musk. Billionaire owners of two major newspapers overrode their editorial boards’ decisions to endorse Kamala Harris, while many others are kissing Trump’s ring by making large donations to his inauguration committee slush fund,” the senator continued. “They do not believe in democracy—the right of ordinary people to control their own futures. They firmly believe that the rich and powerful should determine the future.”
Progressives, Sanders wrote, have a “radically different vision,” one that prioritizes “an economic system based on the principles of justice,” “a vibrant democracy based on one person, one vote,” and making “healthcare a human right.”
“Even though we are not going to succeed in achieving that vision in the immediate future with Trump as president and Republicans controlling Congress, it is important that vision be maintained and we continue to fight for it,” wrote Sanders.
Since Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, Sanders has focused heavily on the need to organize the working class to combat the threat posed by Musk and other far-right billionaires who have amassed obscene wealth and political power.
In his email on Monday, the senator said he intends to “travel, organize, hold events, and create content that reaches people where they are” in the coming weeks as part of the “struggle to determine where we go from here.”
“Will this effort be easy?” asked Sanders. “No, of course it will not. Can it be done? We have no choice. If there was ever a moment when progressives needed to communicate our vision to the people of our country, this is that time. Despair is not an option. We are fighting not only for ourselves. We are fighting for our kids and future generations, and for the well-being of the planet.”
President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk talk ringside during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on November 16, 2024 in New York City. (Photo: Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)
It appears that Trump has entered into a power-sharing agreement with Musk and several other wealthy individuals including Vivek Ramaswamy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and David Sacks.
Democracy decays into oligarchy when a few individuals accumulate most of the political power.
The reelection of Donald Trump has accelerated the decline of the United States into oligarchy. Trump has had billionaire donors for each of his presidential campaigns, but in 2024 the role of these wealthy donors expanded. Donors such as Elon Musk made gigantic contributions to Trump’s campaign; in return for this they are taking an active role in the Trump White House. Perhaps, this time around, Trump turned the oval office into a time-share.
On December 19, Elon Musk led the call for House Republicans to repudiate a continuing resolution they had just negotiated to keep the federal government running through the end of the year. Perhaps Musk’s charter includes coordination with Congress.
When Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy speak of increasing government efficiency, they usually start with services for the unfortunate.
It appears that Trump has entered into a power-sharing agreement with Musk and several other wealthy individuals including Vivek Ramaswamy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and David Sacks. However this arrangement works, it’s likely that the Trump administration will cater to billionaires—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) observed that the 13 billionaires chosen by Trump to serve in his administration have a combined wealth of at least $383 billion.
What do these billionaires want? The oligarchs and billionaires want lower taxes and reduced government regulations. Of course, each billionaire has a particular set of interests; for example, David Sacks, Trump’s “AI and crypto czar,” is a venture capitalist with heavy investment in AI and crypto. Sadly. most of the oligarchs are climate-change deniers.
The oligarchs want more wealth. Robert Reich observes:
Since [1980], the median wage of the bottom 90% has stagnated. The share of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest 400 Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1% to 3.5%) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3%… The richest 1% of Americans now has more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.
The oligarchs share a fiscally conservative agenda. They intend to shrink the size of the federal government. The particulars vary but the oligarchs are not concerned with the size of the defense budget; their cost-cutting focus is on programs that service the poor and disadvantaged—such as Medicaid. When Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy speak of increasing government efficiency, they usually start with services for the unfortunate.
What are the practical consequences of this shift to oligarchy? It’s unsettling to be in a political situation where we do not understand who is in charge at the White House. We don’t know how power-sharing will work. The relationship between Trump and Congress has been fraught. The shift to oligarchy will make this relationship even more difficult.
Will the oligarchs fix the economy? Trump was elected because he promised to fix the economy. Most Americans believed he would drive down inflation; they thought Trump would reduce the cost of food, housing, and household and medical expenses. Since November 5, Trump has given no indication of how he plans to do this. Perhaps he has lost interest.
During the presidential campaign, Trump said his inflation-fighting agenda would rely upon tariffs, but it’s likely that the oligarchs will influence how Trump’s tariff strategy plays out. Musk has huge business interests in China, and it’s unlikely that he would support a tariff policy that would hurt his relationships with the country.
Trump has appointed a “czar” for immigration (Tom Homan), energy (Doug Burgum), and AI & Crypto (Sacks). Trump has not appointed a czar for inflation. With much fanfare, Trump has appointed a commission on “government efficiency;” they’ve already started meeting. Trump has not appointed to a commission to curb inflation.
After January 20, Trump will own inflation and the economy. Trump’s immigration “purge” will drive up the cost of food. Trump’s tariffs will drive up the cost of household expenses.
Trump’s trying to ignore inflation. Or turn it over to an oligarch co-president. Stay tuned.
STARMERISM is an attempt to turn the clock back. It isn’t working, cannot work and tolerating it risks disaster for the working-class movement.
It has always been an attempt to turn the clock back. The entire Starmer project was, from his election as Labour leader on a false prospectus, an attempt to undo Corbyn: to drag the unruly Labour Party back to a supposed “middle ground” of support for neoliberal economics and imperialist war.
It has been a project pursued with total ruthlessness: Labour members were, and are, broadly supportive of Corbyn’s manifesto commitments to greater public ownership and redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation, and certainly weren’t happy with the former leader being portrayed as the devil incarnate and cast out of the party, so Starmer had to smash Labour democracy.
His regime has banned debate in constituency parties, suspended those in their entirety when they wouldn’t play ball, and expelled anyone who dared to object. Since coming to power, MPs have found themselves excluded from the parliamentary party for backbench rebellion against child poverty — an authoritarian intolerance for dissent far harsher than anything Tony Blair ever expressed.
The paranoia reflects an underlying reality: Starmer and his acolytes know the majority are against them and must coerce because they cannot persuade. In this sense, the project is about much more than exorcising Corbyn.
It is part of a wider ruling-class effort to reboot the British system so we are back where we were in 2015 or even 2007 — pre-Corbyn, pre-Brexit, pre-bankers’ crash: when the world was one the liberal elite understood and had mastery over.
It is an impossible task. In foreign policy, the “unipolar moment” is gone: the West is no longer economically strong enough to dictate to the world, and its attempts to do so merely alienate.
In domestic policy, the consensus for privatisation and unfettered corporate domination of the economy can only continue to deliver what it delivers already: worsening services and falling living standards.
The two come together because Establishment liberalism is collapsing in the cockpit of imperialism, the United States. It is already defeated there by hard-right nationalism of the Farage type, but the nature of the US-led “free world” forces the ostensibly liberal leaders of Europe to fawn on the demagogic leader of the counter-revolution, Donald Trump.
Labour members fooled into voting for Starmer on the grounds he might be a polished, media-savvy version of Corbyn misunderstood Establishment hatred of the Corbyn project: it was about content, not form, and any leader threatening real reform would have met the same vitriol.
Similarly, the angst now expressed by liberal commentators from the Guardian to Channel 4 about Starmer not having what it takes to see off Farage is off-piste. Starmer is bad at politics, but that is not the root of a problem that engulfs Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden too. Liberalism has nothing to offer and populations across the West can no longer be duped.
The labour movement needs to wake up to this. Without a radical change of direction from Labour, Britain will soon be ruled by nasties of the Donald Trump sort, whose hostility to trade unions (see Elon Musk) equals their viciousness towards immigrants.
The Jonathan Freedlands and Robert Pestons wonder if Starmer needs to be replaced. He does, but not because he is incompetent: because his zombie-Blair politics are anachronistic. The political consensus of the 1990s is not coming back.
It’s over a century since Rosa Luxemburg defined the choice facing humanity as socialism or barbarism. It is the choice now, for sure. We can break with Starmer-Labour or we can resign ourselves to Reform UK: there is no middle ground.
Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
The president-elect’s advisers are reportedly discussing plans to shrink or eliminate key bank watchdogs, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
President-elect Donald Trump and his advisers are reportedly considering plans to weaken—or abolish altogether—top bank regulators, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that members of Trump’s transition team and the new Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency have asked nominees under consideration to head the FDIC and OCC if the bank watchdogs could be eliminated and have their functions absorbed by the Treasury Department, which is set to be run by a billionaire hedge fund manager and crypto enthusiast.
“Bank executives are optimistic President-elect Donald Trump will ease a host of regulations on capital cushions and consumer protections, as well as scrutiny of consolidation in the industry,” the Journal reported. “But FDIC deposit insurance is considered near sacred. Any move that threatened to undermine even the perception of deposit insurance could quickly ripple through banks and in a crisis might compound customer fears.”
The Trump team’s internal and fluid discussions about the fate of the key bank regulators broadly aligns with Project 2025’s proposal to “merge the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, and the Federal Reserve’s non-monetary supervisory and regulatory functions.”
The FDIC, which is primarily funded by bank insurance premiums, was established during the Great Depression to restore public trust in the nation’s banking system, and the agency played a central role in navigating the 2023 bank failures that threatened a systemic crisis.
Observers warned that gutting the FDIC and OCC could catalyze another economic meltdown.
“The next recession starts here,” tech journalist Jacob Silverman warned in response to the Journal‘s reporting.
Eric Rauchway, a historian of the New Deal, wrote that “even Milton Friedman appreciated the FDIC,” underscoring the extreme nature of the incoming Trump administration’s deregulatory ambitions.
Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, is also pushing for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency established in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
The Journal noted Thursday that “Rep. Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky and Trump ally on the House Financial Services Committee, has backed the plan to eliminate or drastically alter the CFPB and said he wants to get rid of what he calls ‘one-size-fits-all’ regulation for banks.”
Barr has received millions of dollars in campaign donations from the financial sector and “introduced many pieces of pro-industry legislation, including significant rollbacks of protections stemming from the 2008 financial crisis,” according to the watchdog group Accountable.US.
