The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, has hit back after not being invited to the UK government’s International Investment Summit.
He was not invited due to his social media posts during last month’s riots, the BBC understands.
“I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted pedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts,” Mr Musk claimed on X.
Earlier this month, the government released some prisoners to reduce prison overcrowding, but no people serving sentences for sex offences were included.
Following disorder and rioting across the UK in August, some people were jailed for encouraging unrest on social media.
Violence spread across the country after a stabbing attack in Southport, in which three children attending a dance class were killed. At the time, Mr Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, predicting civil war in the UK and repeatedly attacking the prime minister.
The summit in October is the key moment that PM Sir Keir Starmer hopes will attract tens of billions of pounds in inward funding for business from the world’s biggest investors.
Mr Musk was invited to last year’s event but did not attend. However, he took a starring role in November’s AI Summit, including a fireside chat with then-PM Rishi Sunak.
The government declined to comment on the tech entrepreneur not being invited to the summit and the billionaire’s backlash to the decision.
But Jeremy Hunt, the former Conservative chancellor and now the shadow chancellor, told the BBC it was a “big loss” not to have Mr Musk at the summit.
“He told me last year he was planning a new car plant in Europe and had not decided where but the UK was a candidate,” Mr Hunt claimed.
During the August riots, Mr Musk shared, and later deleted, a conspiracy theory about the UK building “detainment camps” on the Falkland Islands for rioters, on X – the social media platform he owns.
At the time ministers said his comments were “totally unjustifiable” and “pretty deplorable”.
The BBC understands this is why he has not been invited to join hundreds of the world’s biggest investors at the event on 14 October.
David Yelland, a public relations specialist and former editor of the Sun newspaper, told the BBC that if Mr Musk were to attend the summit, it would be “reputationally disastrous for the whole event”.
“He’s a fan of free speech but he behaves like a child and he post things that are deeply inaccurate and extremely damaging,” he said.
“This is just not a guy that is saying stuff in the pub. This is a guy that is encouraging untruths around the world.
“Just because he’s so wealthy, just because he’s so influential doesn’t make any difference. At some point we have to stand up against him, no matter what the consequences are.”
Musk’s presence ‘unthinkable’
The government’s decision not to invite Mr Musk to the investment summit suggests that it thinks the potential investment is not worth the reputational risk and opens up uncomfortable questions about the background of other investors it has actively encouraged.
Attracting international investment routinely involves charm offensives with investors or nations with questionable human rights records.
The government has actively pursued trade links in the Gulf. Sir Keir, for example, publicly boycotted the 2022 World Cup in Qatar as leader of the opposition, but now he and his team routinely visit these nations to drum up trade and investment.
A number of top sovereign wealth fund executives are expected at the summit next month.
Privately, insiders suggested that Mr Musk’s presence at such a summit would be unthinkable given his comments about the UK last month.
Coming two weeks head of the Budget, the government is billing it as a huge opportunity to attract foreign investment to grow the UK economy. The Labour Party committed before the general election to hold this event within its first 100 days in office.
Mr Musk is said to be turning his attention to a second European gigafactory in addition to his plant in Berlin, Germany, after completing his Mexican plant.
Under the Conservatives, the Tesla boss was quietly shown around various UK sites with potential for a gigafactory for cars and batteries.
He has previously told journalists he opened the site in Berlin and not the UK partly because of Brexit.
Mr Musk is a regular at the equivalent French investment summit. In July, he attended a three-hour lunch with top executives with President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the Paris Olympics earlier this summer.
Under his ownership of the site formerly known as Twitter, Mr Musk lifted the ban on far-right figures, including on the Britain First group.
The UK is considering a tougher Online Safety Act, after the role of misinformation in the widespread racist disorder in August.
He is the world’s richest person and has used his platform to make his views known on a vast array of topics.
Bloomberg estimates his net worth to be around $228bn.
That’s based largely on the value of his shares in Tesla, of which he owns more than 13%. The company’s stock soared in value – some say unreasonably – in 2020 as the firm’s output increased and it started to deliver regular profits.
Since bursting on to the Silicon Valley scene more than two decades ago, the 53-year-old serial entrepreneur has kept the public captivated with his business antics.
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Mr Musk showed his talents for entrepreneurship early, going door to door with his brother selling homemade chocolate Easter eggs and developing his first computer game at the age of 12.
For a long time Mr Musk, who became a US citizen in 2002, resisted efforts to label his politics – calling himself “half-Democrat, half-Republican”, “politically moderate” and “independent”.
He says he voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and – reluctantly – Joe Biden, all of them Democrats.
But in recent years he’s swung behind Donald Trump, who is a Republican. Mr Musk officially endorsed the former president for a second term in 2024 after his attempted assassination.
