Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is in the US where he is due to attend an election day party at Donald Trump’s Florida home in Mar-a-Lago. In an interview with the Telegraph, he has said that Trump, who is a friend, should accept defeat if he loses the presidential election. (See 10am.)
But Farage said he expected Trump to win. And he said he was particularly excited by the prospect of a Trump victory because Trump has said he will put Elon Musk, the Tesla founder and X owner, in charge of a government efficiency commission. Farage said that Musk would slash government spending, and that this would provide a blueprint for what Reform UK would propose for Britain. He told the Telegraph:
"This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.
There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.
Because that’s what Reform UK believes in - that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting.
They’ll all be gone. They’ll all be fired. Why do we need Whitehall with all these useless, ghastly Marxists? Universities have all become madrassas of Marxism. The whole thing is appalling.
Trump’s first term taking on the deep state was impossible because they had no idea how it worked; he finished up with a lot of people around him who weren’t supporters and who were imposed upon him.
They didn’t know an American president has the power to appoint 3,000 people. This time they have been working really hard on that for 18 months."
Rightwingers regularly complain that the state is too large (Kemi Badenoch believes this too), but it’s unusual to argue that Musk’s management of Twitter has been a success. Since he took over, it has lost three quarters of its value, equivalent to a sum worth around $30bn. That is partly because, after Musk sacked most of the moderators, people were less willing to use and advertise on the site.
I have to say I’d love to see this done. In a simulation. From outside. It sounds like the equivalent of a car crash test for the entire state. Which bits come off first? Who dies and who gets away with lifelong injuries? How many infants get fired through the windscreen? Vote Reform and find out.
How about let’s not find out… 🥹
If we’re lucky Trump put Elon in charge of maintenance efficiency at Mar-a-blahgo, and they all die in an easily preventable natural gas explosion…
If it brings about chad consciousness at long last I’m all for it. Then we can eat Farage and his like
Not surprising as they both have the same boss.
As an American. Please take him. He kinda already sounds like he is from there
I would also like the size of the state to be shrunk, but Musk’s shrinking of Twitter is really not a good model to emulate.
