Vincent McAviney: UK correspondent on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer clashing with Elon Musk over 'civil war' comments

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has hit back at Elon Musk over claims that a 'civil war' may break out in the UK.

On a video of rioters setting off fireworks at police, Musk commented that civil war was 'inevitable'.

UK correspondent Vincent McAviney says Starmer and his team have been working to get a grip on the riots - and social media responses.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Vincent mcavanie is our UK correspondent, Vincent good morning, Good afternoon.
Why is Kios Starmer so prickly about Elon Musk saying
that civil war is inevitable? Well, what we've seen on
social media, particularly on x formerly Twitter, is a lot
of unverified video flying about, but also a lot of

(00:20):
far right accounts who have been trying to encourage people
to take to the streets to conduct this violent thuggery
that has been going on across the UK, and Starma
obviously is trying to get a grip on this. He's
a new prime minister. Elon Musk has been reacting though
to directly to accounts, one in particular europe Invasion, which
is a far right European website that spreads disinformation very

(00:45):
clearly does so along as some other far right accounts,
and he also posted a comment saying that civil war
is inevitable under a video of violent rights in Liverpool. Now,
understandably Kiirs Starmer is not happy with this kind of commentary.
We are far from civil war in this country, to
be fair to Kiirstarma, but as spokesperson for the Prime

(01:08):
Minister said that the violence had come from a small
minority of people who do not speak for Britain, and
the Prime Minister did not share the sentiments of the billionaire.
So this is I think something we're going to see
in the next few days. Actually, this might be sort
of Elon must trying to pick a fight before he
knows one is coming, because we're likely to have the
heads of social media companies, whether it's Twitter, whether it's Meta,

(01:32):
being hauled into Downing Street to be asked about what
they're doing, because it is a crime in this country
to incite racial hatred, both online and in person, and
so I think they're going to be asked about how
they've operated in the last week since this tragedy in Southport.
Are you guys expecting it to continue for another day? Well,
we had had a quiet a day on Monday, but

(01:54):
overnight there has been rioting or sort of this kind
of violence again in Plymouth that's spread there for the
first time, and then it's also been taking place in
Belfast and Darlington. The intelligence the police had was that
there was set to be a spike on Wednesday, but
we will see. What is starting to happen now is

(02:16):
people have been in court for the first time making
their first appearance in magistrates court. Some of them have
been slightly shocked that they are not being granted any
form of bail, that they are having to be remanded
in custody. And I think maybe if word gets out
that not only are people being remanded in custody until
hearings until trials, which in this country have a huge

(02:37):
backlog because of what's going on in our justice system,
and they're also looking at facing the toughest of sentencings
because that's what's happened recently to climate protesters. That just
stop oil people getting maximum prescribed sentences. And I think
that is the message coming out from the government that
they want to see as much as possible tough sentencing. Listen,
I see that the government with you guys, has told

(02:59):
the citizens to leave lib On. How many of them
are there, Yeah, I mean there is a couple a
couple of hundreds of British citizens we think in Lebanon,
and that is the word from the UK government. That
is what others have said now the US as well Ireland,
all in anticipation of potentially a widening conflict between Israel

(03:23):
and Hesbala and Iran. We know back in April Iran struck,
but the US and a coalition of the UK, France
and others managed to sort of effectively thwart entire attack.
The US, behind the scenes diplomatically, is trying to rebuild
that coalition somewhat and as moving more defense assets into
the region. But it does seem like we might not

(03:43):
get the same kind of warnings that we got of
that strike from Iran and from sources, and so the
UK sort of following others now and saying that really,
if you don't need to be in that country, it's
time to get out because the situation is too unpredictable.
What do you make this news? It's pretty good actually,

(04:03):
it's appeared in West London. It's sort of the end
of a property. He seems to quite like doing things
at the moment, a sort of gable ends of properties
that's been as modus recently. I think they're slightly harder
to remove perhaps, And so there is a sort of
support struck that juts out from the building somewhat, and
then on top of it he has posted he's sort

(04:25):
of done his spray painting of what looks to be
a sort of a billy goat, you know, teetering on
it with some rocks falling off, and he'd also pointed
a CCTV camera which was there. He pointed it up
towards the goat. We understand that's now been pointed back
down to the owner as to where it needs to
point at. But yeah, it's pretty good. It's by q
Bridge in Richmond, and you know, he's sort of done

(04:47):
a lot of political stuff recently, but this just seems
to be sort of a quite a classic thanks he
which is just sort of a little bit of an
animal humor. Vincent's so good to talk to. You really
appreciate about. That's Vincent Megavinny, our UK correspondents this evening.
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