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‘What is going on?!’: Elon Musk shares fake headline posted by British far-right party

Elon Musk has shared a fake headline posted by the co-leader of the British far-right political party, Britain First.

The X owner shared a news story purporting to be from the Telegraph newspaper suggesting Sir Keir Starmer is considering building ’emergency detainment camps’ on the Falkland Islands to house rioters involved in recent uprisings.

A cursory Google search for the headline would have quickly proved that it isn’t real, while The Telegraph has since confirmed it did not publish such an article.

Though Musk deleted the tweet within an hour, he is yet to acknowledge the move.

It is believed the tweet was seen by almost two million people before it was deleted.

The tweet from Ashlea Simon has since been hit with a “community note” stating that the story isn’t real.

Musk has been locked in a very public battle with Starmer as riots spread across the UK on the back of misinformation that was allowed to spread like wildfire on his platform.

On Tuesday (6/8), he escalated the spat with the UK PM by calling him “two-tier Keir” in a series of new tweets.

Musk tagged the prime minister in several tweets, writing “Why aren’t all communities protected in Britain?” and “#TwoTierKeir”.

The Prime Minister has rejected claims of “two-tier policing” in Britain after Nigel Farage suggested riots over the last week have been dealt with more harshly than other recent unrest and protests.

Downing Street had criticised Mr Musk for tweeting that “civil war is inevitable” in the UK, with Sir Keir’s official spokesman saying that there was “no justification for comments like that”.

“We’re talking about a minority of thugs who don’t speak for Britain,” he said.

Related: GB News considers suing advertisers who boycott its channel

Jack Peat

Jack is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE). He has contributed articles to VICE, Huffington Post and Independent and is a published author. Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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