Elon Musk wades into London mayoral election with reaction to Laurence Fox rant

The political right is continuing to throw a tantrum over Labour’s Sadiq Khan beating Conservative candidate Susan Hall and securing a historic third term as mayor of London, to the extent that even Twitter/X founder Elon Musk has reacted to the latest elections across the pond.

On Saturday, Reclaim Party leader Laurence Fox – who failed to submit the right paperwork to run for mayor and then failed to get elected in the London-wide assembly vote – penned a tweet in which he fumed that a number of elected individuals are all Muslim (even when some of them aren’t).

He wrote: “The Mayor of London is a Muslim. The mayor of Birmingham is a Muslim. The Mayor of Leeds is Muslim. Mayor of Blackburn - Muslim. The mayor of Sheffield is a Muslim. The mayor of Oxford is a Muslim. The mayor of Luton is a Muslim. The mayor of Oldham is Muslim. The mayor of Rochdale is Muslim,

“All this was achieved by only 4 million Muslims out of 66 million people in England.”

Fox appears to have recycled a viral post which was fact-checked by Full Fact back in 2017. Now, Twitter/X’s Community Notes feature has seen users point out a number of inaccuracies with the ex-GB News host’s post.

Namely, that the lord mayors of Birmingham (Chaman Lal, who is Sikh), Leeds (Al Garthwaite), Sheffield (Colin Ross) and Rochdale (Mike Holly) are not Muslims.

Fox goes on to claim “there are over 3,000 mosques in England” – Full Fact, responding to a version which gave the same figure for the whole UK, said “the true figure is likely to be between 1,000 and 2,000”.

Full Fact noted that some 30 “major Sharia councils have been identified”, going to “85 at least” if you include smaller councils and online sites – again, not the same as Fox’s claim that there are “130 Sharia courts and 50 Sharia councils” (there’s no difference between the two things).

The 63 per cent figure on Muslim women being out of work and in receipt of benefits and housing support is inaccurate, with the Office for National Statistics reporting in 2021 that the unemployment rate was actually as low as 6.7 per cent.

Finally, Full Fact noted in 2017 that the average Muslim household including children has 2.3 children – not six to eight as Fox suggests.

Nevertheless, Musk has been shocked by Fox’s assertions, responding to it on Saturday by simply tweeting: “Wow.”

Other social media users have blasted Fox’s inaccurate stats – not least his complaining around who has “been given an opportunity to vote” for these individuals who were… well… elected:

And in addition to being ridiculed for getting his facts wrong, Fox has also been mocked for declaring he will be leaving the “s***hole” and “violent ghetto” he considers London to be as a result of Khan being re-elected, with many celebrating his departure:

Fox only managed to gain 13,795 votes in the London-wide assembly vote, losing to the likes of the Animal Welfare Party and the Rejoin EU party.

Embarrassing.

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.