British politics is suddenly dominating conversation on X for all the wrong reasons. Tech titans like Elon Musk have stumbled onto the grooming-gangs scandal – a series of truly horrifying crimes that were downplayed or ignored by various authorities, in part because of fears about anti-Muslim backlash.

Musk, Bill Ackman and other Americans are lighting up X with their outrage, accusing local British politicians, the police and public authorities of throwing vulnerable girls under the bus to preserve votes or ease racial tensions. They’re slamming Keir Starmer’s record as Director of Public Prosecutions and hammering Jess Phillips, the Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, for recently blocking a fresh inquiry into grooming in Oldham.

Whatever the precise fairness of each critique, Britain must grapple with the full shame of this episode – an episode that, while it did hit the headlines sporadically, never became the campaigning story of the press and broadcast media in the way its scale and importance justified. Now, the unblinking American spotlight may finally force that reckoning. But this American attention is really just the first example of a broader force set to affect Britain’s politics: the vibe shift in politics stateside. Most UK commentators haven’t fully grasped the implications of how that different American mood music will shape their own political discourse.

Detailed by both Tyler Cowen and Niall Ferguson, through 2024 there was a sharp change in the dominant atmosphere of American politics. This wasn’t an ideological revolution, as such, but was amplified by the fusion of the Trump Right with a raft of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Wall Street financiers. Pushed towards Trump’s orbit by government pandemic overreach, executive jawboning of tech companies on content moderation and left-wing antisemitism after the October 7 attacks, this newly emboldened group of major personalities felt free to voice unfiltered opinions – and thanks to Musk’s X, they had a platform willing to host them.