Elon Musk has launched his most high-profile appeal to try and influence British politics, but the approach is unlikely to prove effective.

Summary

Elon Musk has called on King Charles III to dissolve the UK Parliament, citing past controversies involving Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Rotherham Scandal.

Musk accused Starmer of inaction during his tenure as head of the Crown Prosecution Service and urged a new general election, drawing backlash for spreading misinformation.

Critics argue that the monarchy lacks the unilateral power to dissolve Parliament under the 2022 Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act.

Musk’s growing political involvement globally, including support for right-wing parties, has sparked calls for regulation against foreign interference.

  • HexesofVexes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    50·
    3 months ago

    I mean, if the king really wants to become beloved of the people he should indeed make a visit to parliament, and request they dissolve Musk’s UK holdings.

  • Deestan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    3 months ago

    Why is this reported on as if King Charles or anyone else in Britain should give a shit?

    • valkyre09@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      3 months ago

      Here’s something kinda cool about the Monarchy. The king can just decide that Musk’s interference is illegal and shut down Xitter in the UK would be kinda funny.

      I’m not a fan of that approach, but at the same time you don’t ask cancer to leave your body, you cut that shit out!

      • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        The king has no real power. Real power lies with the prime minister since previous kings with the same name and the Glorious Revolution. He’s a figurehead.

          • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            3 months ago

            The word “theoretically” is doing a lot of lifting in that video. He said that the Queen is in important political figure, but that’s incorrect. The monarchy in the UK survives by being apolitical and they all know that the day they start meddling in politics is the day when the royal family loses its one remaining role in the UK - ceremony. Their long standing popularity comes from the pomp and circumstance, and if they get mixed up in politics, they’ll become deeply unpopular, just like everyone else who tells the British people what to do does in the end.

            All the real power went in the civil war and the glorious revolution. Parliament decides who is the monarch. If the king went rogue, he’d be gone before you can say “that’s not what we were looking for in the role of ceremonial figurehead.”

            “The Crown” actually includes, quite as a matter of law, the government and specifically the prime minister.

            So all the stuff about signing laws isn’t real power. It’s not about whether it becomes law, it’s about when it becomes law.

            The King is The Sovereign, but he is not sovereign, Parliament is sovereign.

            He embodies British power, but he doesn’t wield it.

    • towerful@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      3 months ago

      I hope he suggests musk seeks professional medical mental health.
      Musk is not in a healthy position. Someone needs to reach out to him, so he gets help

      • ms.lane@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        I wouldn’t be surprised if he had long Covid clouding his brain, he started going loony not long after the first big covid wave in the US…

        Used to be-

        • An introvert

        • Kept his opinions largely to himself outside some occasional jabs (ie. ‘The trampoline is working!’)

        • Intelligent

        • Supported universal health, free university and UBI

        Post 2021 -

        • Very opinionated, but mostly not his opinions- those of other people.

        • Extroverted to a high level, constantly talking.

        • Dumb

        • No longer supports any of the left ideals he used to, now it’s all full extreme-right.

  • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    3 months ago

    I urge anyone with a bathtub full of acid to dissolve Elon Musk. It can also be an oil drum instead of a bathtub, or something else. I’m not too picky for that matter.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    3 months ago

    Well, he has sausage fingers, but he can still do something like what Mummy likely would have done if some South African upstart tried to tell her what to do:

  • Opisek@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    3 months ago

    Can he please stop sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. Being a US president isn’t enough. He wants to be the German chancellor and British PB now, too?

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    3 months ago

    I was going to make a joke about how King Charles should dissolve Elon in a vat of acid, but I’m not sure if that’s comes off as promoting violence in our current climate of oligarchicide.

    • BougieBirdie@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      10·
      3 months ago

      Since this is advice given to a monarch by a person who otherwise has no impact on the rich and powerful, I’d argue you could call this a case of Jester’s Privilege

      We should bring that back. If nothing I do matters, then nothing I say matters, right?

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      3 months ago

      It would definitely be skirting the line of what we would moderate, but I think we’d probably let it go just because it’s a comic book villain ending rather than saying “shoot him in the head” or whatever.

      Plus, it would obviously be a joke.

      Edit: all I can picture is this, but with Elon’s face on it.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      3 months ago

      It’s a mixed bag actually. Charles 2 did it successfully but only because he essentially had a popular mandate to do so. (Parliament kept trying to do an Inquisition of Catholics, and people were unamused.)

      James 2 tried to follow that act and was deposed in 3 years. So mileage may vary.