Deputy leader asks Keir Starmer if he will take steps ‘to assess the threat to our democracy and recommend measures to this house that we can take to stop it’

Liberal Democrat leaders have called for an MI5 investigation into Elon Musk’s alleged funding of Tommy Robinson’s legal defence. 

Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is the co-founder of the English Defence League, a former adviser to Ukip and a prominent far-right activist online. Yaxley-Lennon was charged under the Terrorism Act after allegedly refusing to give police his phone PIN in Folkestone in July 2024. If convicted, he could face up the three months in prison and a fine. 

During the most recent prime minister’s questions, the deputy leader of the Lib Dems Daisy Cooper, called for an investigation into Elon Musk – the world’s wealthiest person, the owner of X and the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla – funding the legal costs of the trial.

“If this was Putin, the government surely would act,” Cooper said. “So will the prime minister commission the security services to assess the threat that Elon Musk poses to our democracy and recommend measures to this house that we can take to stop it?”

Yaxley-Lennon has over 1.7m followers on X – formerly Twitter – and Musk regularly retweets posts from the former English Defence League leader and also spoke at a rally organised by him in London last month. In a virtual address, Musk called for the dissolution of parliament and a change of government.

“Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you,” Musk said. “You either fight back or you die, that’s the truth, I think.”

Yaxley-Lennon has denied the charges against him, citing journalistic confidentially as a reason for not handing over his phone to police and calling the trial an “absolute state persecution”.

In a post on X, Yaxley-Lennon pushed back against the request for an MI5 investigation, describing Cooper as “disgusting” and a “lying, censorious, authoritarian masquerading as a liberal democrat.” 

In response to the Lib Dems request for an investigation into Musk, prime minister Keir Starmer said that the government does “look across the board at threats to our democracy,” but refused to speak about the trial due to the current legal proceedings.

A version of this story originally appeared on PublicTechnology sister publication Holyrood