ELON MUSK is a US citizen who has lived in several mansions in Los Angeles. But despite his local knowledge, Musk has been busy pumping out entirely made-up stories about the cause of the Los Angeles fires.

Given Musk talks nonsense about his own country and former city, why would anyone take seriously his ranting about Britain? For much of the British media and political system, the fact Musk has loads of money seems to outweigh his obvious lack of sense.

For Los Angeles, Musk and Donald Trump claimed California Governor Gavin Newsom had failed to sign a “water restoration declaration” that would have allowed “millions of gallons of water” from “snowmelt” in the north to flow into the state and so stop the fires.

But this “water restoration declaration” does not exist. It is a ludicrous fantasy. Musk went further and promoted another bizarre delusion. Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones put out a video claiming the fires were a deliberate part of a “globalist plot to wage economic warfare” against the US, somehow caused by a mix of the UN and environmentalists.

Jones makes these absurd claims, interspersed with many requests to buy his “health supplements,” in an obviously ridiculous segment on his Infowars show. Musk responded on X with one word — “True.”

Musk prefers these crazy claims of imaginary water laws or shadowy conspiracies behind the fires, despite their obvious hokiness, because he doesn’t want to think that global warming or low investment in public services could be to blame.

Given Musk’s crackpot theories about California, it is no surprise he likes equally fake news about Britain, a nation of which he knows very little.

Musk has latched onto the long-running scandal of “grooming gangs.” Throughout the 2000s there has been a slow realisation that gangs based in the “night-time economy” of minicabs and takeaways have been systematically preying on, sexually exploiting and raping young girls.

There have been prominent cases like Rotherham and Oldham where the gangs have been principally British-Asian men. Musk wants to claim that this means that most sexual abuse against girls in Britain is committed by British Asian men, and that Labour allow this because it wants Asian votes.

Musk particularly relies on an X account called “Visegrad 24,” run by Polish rightwingers, so the US billionaire can’t even find a British racist to support his wild claims. Musk circulated their claim that “only about 1 per cent of the British population is Pakistani men, but, according to the Cockbain report, they committed 80 per cent of the gang rapes. Only 3.6 per cent of gang rapes were committed by white men.”

There is no “Cockbain report” making this obviously false claim. “Visegrad 24” appears to be mangling figures from a 2018 book by leading criminologist Dr Ella Cockbain which was a close study of six largely British-Asian “street grooming” gangs that had been prosecuted.

Unsurprisingly, most members of these British-Asian gangs were in fact British-Asian, or British-Pakistani. But only an idiot or liar would assume this close study means that British-Pakistani men commit “80 per cent” of “gang rapes” or offences against children in Britain. Anyone who has spent any time genuinely looking at this issue would know Dr Cockbain is a leading critic of the idea that this kind of child sexual exploitation is racially driven.

The Times has done some useful recent work into the actual numbers. Using figures from Operation Hydrant, a cross-force police investigation into “group-based child sex abuse” it found 82 per cent of suspects were “white British,” 8 per cent of suspects were “Asian,” which broadly matches the population.

This kind of “group-based” exploitation is only a small minority of child sexual abuse, excluding the larger numbers of children abused within family-and-friend circles or institutions like churches. The broader figures also show most sex abuse is committed by white men, in line with the make-up of the population.

Musk likes the fake figures because he wants to stir up racial hatred to attack “liberal” thought because the South African-raised billionaire likes right-wing low-tax politicians like Trump. That’s bad in itself, but the danger of only looking for British Asian or British Pakistani perpetrators is that it would put all the victims of white predators in danger.

Musk wants to say Labour politicians deliberately stopped Asian abusers from being prosecuted because they wanted their votes, and is happy to promote fake news to do so. Musk circulated claims that Gordon Brown’s government sent a memo to officers “in respect to the victims of the rape gangs” that said: “We believe they have made an informed choice about their sexual behaviour and therefore it is not for your police officers to get involved.”

Obviously, no such memo exists. It is a complete fantasy.

Again, Musk’s claims are absurd, made for political reasons to stir up hatred. They also do a disservice to victims of abuse. Many studies have shown the police services failed to act for victims against abusers because they thought the girls, many (not all) from poor and troubled backgrounds, were undeserving of their support. They didn’t act, because they felt the girls were riff-raff, describing them as “prostitutes.”

Changing these attitudes requires more “political correctness,” not less. Social work and welfare services, like Risky Business in Rotherham, were key to uncovering the gang abuse because they reached out to the victims. Musk’s budget-slashing politics do not support these kinds of initiatives.

The Tory press and Tory Party have jumped on board with Musk’s amateurish lies. These “patriotic” institutions are happy to back a foreigner lying about their own country if he is very rich and very right wing.

If we want to help the victims of abuse and prevent further abuse, we could enact the existing recommendations of the Jay report. But that would mean spending more money on children’s care, child protection, compensation, therapy and support for victims.

But Musk and his British supporters aren’t interested in spending money to help anyone, they want to use a cloud of vicious blame to cover their commitment to more spending cuts.

Follow Solomon Hughes on X @SolHughesWriter.