Starmer Blasts Elon Musk for 'Whipping Up Division' After Dying Teen Handcuffed and MP Targeted by Grok Rape AI

Keir Starmer accused Elon Musk of 'interfering in our politics' and 'trying to whip up division' on Thursday, as the prime minister met the family of murdered teenager Henry Nowak in Downing Street and backed a Labour MP taking legal action against Musk's Grok artificial intelligence tool.

The highly charged posts by Musk on X about the killing of Nowak, an 18-year-old student from Southampton who was handcuffed by Hampshire police as he lay dying from stab wounds, have intensified scrutiny of his interventions. Many of Musk's posts have echoed far-right talking points, including claims that the case shows the UK is structurally biased against white people, a framing that has been eagerly seized upon by Restore Britain, the far-right party he openly supports.

Starmer sat down with Nowak's parents and stepmother in No. 10 to discuss the police response on the night of the attack and the febrile atmosphere that has built around the case. Emerging from the meeting, he said he was 'profoundly humbled' by the family's composure and promised 'whatever action is required to right the wrongs in this case,' though no specific measures were announced.

Nowak was fatally stabbed in Southampton by 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa, who had falsely claimed that Nowak racially abused and attacked him. Attending officers handcuffed the teenager as he bled from his wounds, an incident now under investigation by the police watchdog. The case has since become a lightning rod online, with anonymous accounts and far-right activists targeting individual officers and pushing racially charged narratives.

Starmer Says Musk Is 'Whipping Up Division' Over Nowak Case

Speaking earlier in West Yorkshire after a meeting with regional mayors, Starmer sharpened his criticism of Musk, making the X owner part of the story rather than just a noisy commentator on it. Britain, he argued, needed to 'assert who we are' as a 'reasonable, tolerant' country in the face of attempts to polarise communities.

'We also need to assert who we are as a country, because Musk again has been interfering in our politics in the last few days, trying to whip up division. That is not who we are in Britain,' he said.

Downing Street did not single out individual Musk posts that had prompted concern. A spokesperson later suggested the worry was about the overall tone of his output, particularly the repeated insistence that the Nowak case proves systematic anti-white bias in British institutions. That framing sits awkwardly against the fact that Nowak's own family have urged calm and unity.

Online, the fallout has been anything but calm. On X, multiple users have falsely identified two Hampshire officers as being directly involved in Nowak's arrest. One has left the force, and, according to the Hampshire Police Federation, the former officer has been forced into hiding after receiving serious threats.

In an unusually stark statement, the federation said it had suspended its social media accounts following 'a sudden surge in online trolls and AI going through all platforms trying to find any information they could about our members, with a view to threatening their safety.' Misidentified officers, it added, had been forced to leave their homes and had 'serious threats made against their life.'

Starmer's spokesperson said such misinformation fell squarely into the remit of Ofcom, which now regulates social media platforms under new online safety rules. Despite the prime minister's attack on the X owner, Downing Street insisted there were no plans for ministers to quit the platform.

Musk, Grok and 'Rape AI' Claims

Musk is not confined to politics and policing. Starmer also used his West Yorkshire visit to back Labour MP Jess Asato, who is suing Musk's xAI company in the High Court in London, alleging that its Grok tool enabled the creation of fake sexualised images of her.

Asato's claim says xAI, now a subsidiary of SpaceX alongside X, breached data protection and privacy laws when Grok was used to generate AI images of her in a bikini and a video depicting her being 'chloroformed and prepared for a sexual assault.' She has described the flood of AI pornography featuring her and other women on X earlier this year as both humiliating and chilling.

'Jess Asato is absolutely right in the action she is taking. Disgusting images were created, in her particular case by Grok,' Starmer said. He argued that the government had already shown it was prepared to confront Musk's companies, saying he was 'really pleased that we took Grok on a few months ago' over the spread of sexualised images, some involving children, and claiming 'we won that' fight. His warning to xAI and X is clear enough: stop the flow of such material or face 'drastic regulatory action.'

Musk, for his part, has become a regular amplifier of ethnonationalist content and a prominent backer of Restore Britain, founded by former Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe. His mixture of culture-war commentary and hands-off content moderation has made X a favoured arena for far-right activists, and the Nowak case has given them a powerful new narrative, regardless of what the official investigations eventually conclude.

Nothing about Musk's role is formally regulated yet, and nothing is confirmed about how his personal posts may have influenced events on the ground, so all such claims should be treated with a degree of caution.

On Tuesday night in Southampton, that online anger spilled into the streets. A protest billed as a demonstration over Nowak's death and his treatment by police descended into violence, with eleven officers and one police dog injured as crowds, including far-right agitators, clashed with police lines.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, also met Nowak's family on Thursday and struck a notably different tone from the online outrage feeding off Musk's posts. 'Henry's family do not want anger to tear communities apart,' she wrote afterwards. 'His family want his memory to help bring our society together.'