Why is Elon Musk paying Rupert Lowe thousands to tweet?

0:02This is a global production. Rupert Lowe, as we say, the leader of Restore, is on course to earn almost as much money from Elon Musk's ex as he does for being an MP. Rupert Lowe is not doing any of this in an underhand way. It is all being declared and it's all above board in the sense that, you know, he's getting paid by ex, he's declaring it. But I just do think it's that wider question of what MPs can do and how they can earn money and what controls there are. According to his declarations from the Register of MPs interests, he's effectively earned around£932 an hour for the time he spends on X.

0:45Since June, that has risen to almost£1 ,500 an hour. Do we want this for our politics? You know, thanks to Elon Musk and what he did with X, I think he has released free speech. I think he has returned some sort of semblance of people's ability to be able to force debate without being bullied by a monopoly like the BBC. That is the leader of Restore, Rupert Lowe, speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast back in July. He was speaking about how grateful he was to Elon Musk, the owner of X, for liberating British free speech. But it turns out that he might have another reason to be especially grateful to the tech entrepreneur.

1:36It seems he is making over£1 ,000 an hour for his posts on X. Should members of Parliament be monetising outrage? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:56The News Agents. It's John. It's Lewis. And this is a story which has been reported in The Guardian today. Rupert Lowe, as we say, the leader of Restore, he's now polling pretty well for a new party, creating all sorts of problems for Nigel Farage, is on course to earn almost as much money from Elon Musk's ex as he does for being an MP, the newspapers are reporting. Since the 2024 election, Lowe has apparently earned more than£105 ,000 from ex's revenue sharing scheme. This is an Elon Musk era innovation on the site. what it does is it pays premium users according to how their posts and how their content on the site performs and the amount that he's earned from that scheme has accelerated very quickly so so far this year according to his declarations from the register of mp's interests he's effectively earned around£932 an hour for the time he spends on X.

3:06Since June, that has risen to almost£1 ,500 an hour. And if his average earnings this year from the site continues, he'll make about£93 ,000 from X, compared with an MP's salary overall of just under£100 ,000. And it could quite easily, on the trajectory that he's on, exceed his MP's salary. Why is this controversial? Well, Well, of course, it's controversial because Lowe has built an enormous engagement, partly through extreme and what many people would say is extremist, provocative political content, among other things, calling for mass deportations, attacking diversity polities, posting repeatedly in the most graphic terms about immigration and minorities in this country.

3:53Indeed, one recent immigration post alone received 1.3 million views. And of course, Musk, it has been said, has helped him algorithmically produce this content and spread it far and wide. And so it begs the question, as John said, should MPs be incentivised in monetary terms for creating division and outrage online? And look, we have spent a long time over the past few months looking at reform, looking at the money, looking at the five million pounds donation. Rupert Lowe is a wealthy man. He was the owner of Southampton Football Club. He's got a big farm. He was he's had all sorts of business interests over the years.

4:40So it's not like he needs the money. It's not like it's what's keeping him afloat. It isn't. Within the confines of the scheme that Elon Musk has set up, Rupert Lowe is playing by the rules. But it is a very odd set of circumstances where we know for a fact that the more outspoken, the more extreme, the more kind of violent or almost your views, the more likely it is to generate likes. And if you're algorithmically incentivised, the more likes, the more money. Then, of course, it takes you in one direction. And, you know, do we want this for our politics? Do we want, you know, look, it's fine.

5:24A lot of journalists, everyone, you know, maybe has an X account. Maybe most people listening to this podcast have an X account. But are you using it to generate money or are you just kind of wanting to be in the public square and have a debate? And it just feels as though Rupert Lowe has kind of hit on something that the more extreme you are and you list there some of the things that he's spoken about, the better you're going to get paid. Oh, yeah. I mean, we I think this really matters, not just about Lowe himself, who we can talk about, but potentially also the precedent it sets for politics in the future.

5:59Because in fairness to Lowe, I mean, I see he's posted on X about this today, saying the Guardian is attacking me over receiving money from X. Trust me, if I wanted to make money, I would not be in politics. I donate my entire net MP salary to charity. This is the most expensive job I've ever had comfortably. So I think it's fair to say that Lo is unlikely to be doing what he's doing to make money or just to make money. But clearly, this is a precedent, which is this is a new thing in our politics. Historically, we have been very concerned about foreign money flowing into our politics. This is basically foreign money from a foreign side.

6:32We have often been concerned and we have been scrutinising rightly and we scrutinise the provenance of donations to MPs, where it comes from, who it is, what they might want in return. We have seen that play out week after week, month after month now with Nigel Farage himself, entirely rightly. Questions about the five million pound from Christopher Harbaugh, what might have been expected for it? Why wasn't it declared? Now, all of this money, this revenue stream is being declared, but it would be most odd if we were concerned about all of those sorts of things and the incentives, the political incentives that might arise from that foreign money or arise from those donations from particular companies or particular corporate entities or in the Labour cases, often said about trade unions or whatever.

7:18But we weren't asking questions about what seems to be, or could be, a new type of revenue stream for politicians in our politics, which is basically monetising online content. The modern politician as a content creator being as important as anything they do, and how that might affect their behaviour. Because clearly you could make an argument that it will be affecting Lowe's behaviour in that he is posting more and more extreme content over time, potentially for money. Look, it is really important for MPs to have a social media presence. It's a great way of communicating with your constituents.

7:54You are kind of, you know, you've got a problem wherever it happens to be with road work suddenly appearing or the water supply not being good enough. And you've got a means of communicating. And so for an MP to be able to do TikTok, to be able to do Instagram and all those sort of things is really very important indeed. And I don't mind at all. And as you say, Lewis, really important to say that Rupert Lowe is not doing this, any of this in an underhand way. It is all being declared and it's all above board in the sense that, you know, he's getting paid by X, he's declaring it. But I just do think it's that wider question of what MPs can do and how they can earn money and what controls there are.

8:37because we try to keep foreign money out of British politics because we don't want outsiders to be influencing our politics by giving undue amounts of money. And yet we don't really know where the source of it. I mean, it's coming from X. It's coming from, you know, presumably it's coming from Elon Musk somewhere in California. I don't know how the payment system works on X. But it is that sense of, look, just the wider question, is this right for a member of parliament to be receiving this sort of money for posting. If you want to have a social media presence, fine, do it, but don't be incentivised by the money aspect of it.

9:13Yeah, he could turn off the money. He doesn't have to have the money. But whether he's going to give it to charity, I don't know. But whatever it is, he's receiving it in some form when he doesn't need to do so. I think that's the other point about this, John, which brings us inevitably back to Musk, because it's just bigger than Lowe. I mean, Lowe is a bit of a pawn, I think, for Musk in all sorts of ways. But it might be one thing if X really was, as Musk claims it to be, some sort of impartial, neutral public square where the left, the right, everything in between, you know, competes on equal terms.

9:47But we know that's not the case. We know that algorithmically certain types of content, particularly if it aligns with what Musk happens to think, which is very aligned with what Rupert Lohr thinks, tends to do very well. So this is, I think, what's new. We used to worry about billionaires donating to political parties and expect something in return. This is this is subtly different. Right. This is a billionaire who owns much of the online political public square because it still is. Musk controls this particular billionaire, controls the algorithm. He amplifies politicians he likes and then the platform pays those politicians according to the engagement they generate.

10:29And he's doing that because Musk wants to influence our politics and has been tremendously successful, I would say, in so doing. There is no question that his amplification of certain type of politicians and certain voices has shifted politics in this country in all sorts of ways and is continuing to do so. And then when you add in the monetisation element to all of that, you basically get a sort of new type of feedback loop, right, or political feedback loop. You create a new political incentive structure where the politician no longer just merely benefits electorally from outrage, but potentially can financially benefit from it as well.

11:07And that is new. And the idea that Elon Musk wanted to own X because he wanted to promote debate and free speech, I think is so far wider than Mark. He wants to promote his world view. And Lewis, you talked a moment ago about the influence he's had on our politics, which is undoubtedly true. I mean, you look at what happened after the Southport riots and the murder of those poor three girls and him talking about civil war is coming to Britain and, you know, kind of almost relishing in it. I saw yesterday he was posting about the surge in support for AFD in Germany, for the Rassemblement National in France.

11:49You know, people saying that these parties have reached their high watermark are wrong. They're doing extremely well. They're getting more popular. That is his worldview. He wants to promote a worldview that is right wing, that is nationalistic, that is rather white, that is anti-immigrant. And he has got the means to do it. And I think that for politicians who are members of parliament at Westminster to be part and parcel of that. and I would say the same that if it was on the far left or you know if it was green MPs or whatever being paid huge sums of money to uh you know be part of the algorithm that will garner support by being extreme I'd say that was wrong as well yeah I think what's also interesting about this story is is the way in which it might point to and signify just ways that our political parties are changing I mean it really does feel like 23-6 particularly with Burnham coming along You know, it really is.

12:45We are living in the era now of the politician as the content creator. And, you know, we can argue about whether that's a good or a bad thing. But I think it definitely changes the nature of our politics in all sorts of ways. I mean, in a way, what we're probably making a mistake of, I mean, Restore in a way is not really a sort of political party in the kind of classic sense. Right. It's basically an online political community where, you know, you compare that with like, you know, the 20th century political party. You have constituency associations, you have CLPs. They're doing bing and bring and buy sales.

13:17They're doing the sort of Christmas raffle. You get the MP coming down with a bottle of House Commons whiskey. Which you signed, or the Prime Minister might have signed. We'll see you again next year. Thanks very much. You know, and all that sort of stuff. In the 21st century, basically what you're doing, and particularly in the 2020s, we're basically seeing an online audience and an online ecosystem develop. And you can see a way in which, you know, that is how you could monetize your political party. And this is the difference, right? And this is and this is also how politics becomes more extreme, right, which is that historically speaking, we would worry about or not even worry about our political parties ability to generate money would would often be pegged to and connected to your electoral support.

13:58Right. And those things are a bit chicken and egg because you need the money to get electoral support. But, you know, you're more likely to attract money if you're a sort of mainstream party with significant levels of political support, because you're most likely to be able to affect policy and all those sorts of things. Whereas in the attention era and the attention economy, political parties could potentially generate money not from getting support, but from getting attention, from getting eyeballs. And how do you get attention? How do you get eyeballs? Well, you say the more extreme things.

14:27So you can just see how this is a sort of signifier of a new way in which a political party could develop and reform for their part rather than restore. You know, the interesting thing about them is actually they have kind of tried to adopt in some ways a more traditional type political structure. You know, you do have those constituency associations and you do have those parties. And, you know, it's a bit different, but it kind of looks a bit like the Conservative Party or Labour Party. What Lowe is doing is sort of pointing and sketching out a slightly different sort of political force. Helps a lot if you've got the world's most rich, well, the most powerful men on side and it wouldn't be available to everyone.

15:08But I think it is a potential interesting signifier of the direction of politics and how our political parties might operate. And we could just listen to Lowe again. This is not from the Joe Rogan experience. This is on Times Radio a little earlier this year. prior to elon musk uh buying at huge cost 44 billion pounds or dollars whatever it was uh it was not a free speech platform and algorithms suppressed things which the owners of of the platform didn't like equally that was the same with facebook elon musk has effectively bought x and he's created a free speech platform now i happen to be a complete and utter devotee of free speech as is elon musk i mean yes but yes but we know that elon musk has had spats with all sorts of people who have posted things he doesn't like who he's tried to take off the platform i mean you know there was a long court case with don lemon a former cnn presenter who was did a you know was a group going to do a show on elon musk's ex and that got canned because elon musk didn't really like the content that much.

16:16It's just another one of those ways, John, where I really feel this with our media and political system all the time, in which our regulatory approach and the regulation of politics and the laws which govern politics just feel so... Antiquated. Antiquated. Antediluvian. Just absolutely clapped out, right? In the digital age. In the sense that, you know, if we had seen a foreign donor or whoever, any sort of donor, billionaire, come along and say, right, I'm going to give you £100 ,000. We know how we'd treat that, right? We know what that would be. It would be treated under the law as a donation, domestic or whatever, right?

16:55And it would be subject to all of the normal, you know, sort of declarations and what you'd be able to use it for and so on. But what if you have£100 ,000 coming from a foreign-owned social media platform to an MP whose political messages the owner of that platform wishes to promote like that isn't a donation under the current system right it's not a it's a payment from a platform that that guy owns helping you spread your message you know it's it's a completely different both in the eyes of the law it is a different thing but maybe it shouldn't be a different thing maybe it's just yet another one of those ways in which frankly as i say our system of governance around foreign donations around the influence of money in our politics is just frankly being completely outpaced by the developments in the technological and political worlds around us and once again i'm just amazed at how completely asleep much of our politics is to that look i was last properly a political correspondent in the lobby at Westminster in the 1990s.

18:06And then it was cash for questions of kind of a few MPs, Tories, getting bunged a couple of hundred quid to ask a question on behalf of some business organisation. Yeah, and then they would get undone by it. And there was sort of Azul Nadir who gave someone a gold watch and, you know, don't let the buggers grind you down and all that sort of stuff. And that was the sort of level of scandal. It was all as it was of its time. The trouble is... We're catching brown envelopes. We know how to deal with that. We know what that is. Exactly. Things have moved on, but the regulatory framework hasn't. And that is where Westminster is behind.

18:43And Rupert Lowe has done nothing wrong in terms of the rules. He has declared what money he has earned. What we're just asking is, is this right?

19:07We are now going to talk about Rishi Sunak, almost the forgotten Prime Minister, it feels like, in the kind of current dizzying pace of political change and dialogue in this country. Because Anthony Selden, the great chronicler of our modern Prime Ministers, his new book Sunak at 10 and with the subtitle the last conservative prime minister question mark has just published his new book very weighty kind of consideration of Rishi Sunak's period as prime minister I suppose the question we're interested in is is there anything that Rishi sunak could have done that could have resulted in a different outcome to the 2024 election he'd come to power after the tories had been there for a very long time and torn each other to shreds so uh there was a lot of course he could have done better he was the youngest pm john for 200 years He was relatively inexperienced, but it was a terrible moment to take over.

20:21He wanted to take over in early September 22 after Boris Johnson, but he was defeated by the membership. His trust won. He really, really did not want to take over at the end of October. He knew it would be hell. and he also, in his heart, though he couldn't admit it in public or indeed to his close circles, in his bones, he knew it was only going to end one way. Why? Because when Boris Johnson took over, the Tory party was 4 % ahead in the average of polls. That was back in July 19. By the time he took over after Johnson and Truss, Labour was 30 % ahead. Now, trying to knock that down, when you've got a party, when you've got your two predecessors and their supporters, namely supporters of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, being deeply unhelpful and your would-be successors very quickly making life difficult for you, there was very little bandwidth.

21:30with. It is hard to think of a prime minister in modern history who took over in more uncertain times. Just one other quick point, John, if I can. The first book I wrote in the series was on John Major. And, you know, look, everyone knew after that defeat in 97, what a rubbish prime minister, what a failure. I mean, the guy didn't even go to public school, didn't go to university. He was utterly hopeless. And Labour loved that and exploited it. The Tories, many of them thought he was completely hopeless. And you know what? 25 years later, it turns out the guy wasn't so bad, a prime minister after all, particularly when judged against the circumstances that he took over.

22:11He did win an election, though. Unlike Sue. Ah, Lewis, come on. You can, whether you win an election or not, doesn't have that much to do with the prime minister, as you know. Well, except, except that what you can say is that by winning the 1992 election, he helped embed the Thatcherite settlement and thereby became quite a significant prime minister in that sense because he continued, albeit with, as famously put, Thatcherism with a human face, he continued that agenda rather than break away from it. So by having 18 years of Tory government rather than 12 or 13 or whatever it was, he was quite important, wasn't he?

22:45Whereas Sunak just was a fag end. So I agree about Major, that Major turns out to have become a much better prime minister since he finished at number 10. He's somehow grown in everyone's estimation. Sunak, come on, look. What does the prime minister do, Lewis? How do we measure a prime minister? Do they leave the economy stronger or weaker? But in a way, wait for a second. Let me just, I sort of want to just rewind slightly. What is actually Sunak's, when John said, is there anything he could have done? Isn't actually, wasn't he damned partly because what he could have done is if he'd won the leadership contest against Truss, i.e.

23:26been a more supple, effective politician, potentially he could have won maybe the general election because then there would never have been the the trust financial crisis and the thing that really destroyed the Tories reputation. So that in a way, it was his failure not to win the leadership election that damned him. Well, he could have said what the electorate, the conservative electorate members wanted to hear. Sure. And he didn't. He said, I'm not going to do that to the economy. No. And Charles told them what they wanted to hear and she won. So I don't think that's a discreditable defeat. But of course, it would have been so much easier to have taken over then.

24:07The party would have been less disrupted and the Tories wouldn't have lost their reputation for economic competence. And if you look at which of the three leaders who lost heavily in the poll of pollings, It was Boris Johnson, as already said, and Liz Truss. That was the damage. He managed to get the 30 % negative up to 10 % negative, 123.7%. And when he took over, when six months later, Kimmy Baden-Württemberg took over in November 2024, the polling, the average polling was 26 % for the Tories. And one poll actually put the Tories ahead under Sunak of Labour. So 26 % then fell back to 15 % in the May 25 elections.

24:54So, you know, even as a political force, and everyone knows, don't they know, don't you know, they was hopeless politically, knew nothing about the party, knew nothing how to, etc., etc. Many of the same tropes that were said about Major. In fact, he wasn't that bad as a political leader. He did the thing, you know, criticised now people that think it was wrong, of hugging the party close together. He brought in supporters of trust. He brought in supporters of Johnson. He brought in supporters. He brought in Braverman. He brought in people across the party thinking quite rightly. This is true to the Conservative Party's 190-year record of success.

25:36You are a one nation. You are a moderate. You are a centre-ground party. You bring people in together. it now that's what but they never trusted him did they they clobbered him you know from outside or from inside they clobbered him from inside some then like brevman and jenrick uh resigned and went outside and carried on clobbering him it was difficult i think uh the really interesting story is how much he achieved despite everything against him yeah so so it's really interesting because we had a we were having a conversation before you arrived anthony about you know sunak and what we thought of where he fitted in.

26:13And, you know, and I made the obvious comparison. You know, it feels like a bit like John Major. What could you do after such a dominant period? And the first thing you did was you compared Sunak to John Major. Do you think that in 25 years time, people will be saying Rishi Sunak, our far more significant prime minister than people give credit for? Because it's hard to see, I think, sitting here now. well um i don't agree with that john uh i think if you look at the the core measures for which we assess premiers uh namely have they left the economy stronger have they left the union stronger have they left britain standing in the world stronger have they left uh britain's relationship with the eu stronger then it is yes to all those i mean inflation came down from 10.7 to 2 percent So I think he did a lot.

27:09I think, look, there's a general consensus, as I said, amongst Tories in particular. The most critical people when Tom Edgerton and I wrote this book of him were the supporters of Kemi Baden-Og, followed by those who defected to reform, followed by supporters of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, followed by Stumwrights. and his stomachs were comparatively mild about him compared to them. They all need to think he's rubbish. That is the point that we're saying. They need to think in the same way people needed to think the major was rubbish. I mean, you go further in the book because you say that actually Badenock, who was in the cabinet then, actively disliked Sunak and considered moving against him while he was prime minister.

27:50Well, she denies that she considered it. People have told us that she did consider it. So what do you make of that? She denies that she saw any advantage. In the words of the Queen, recollections make that. In bringing him down. What we do know is that she wanted to be prime minister. She wanted to succeed Boris Johnson. And she'd seriously considered succeeding Liz Trasperpool back when she realised that she wasn't going to succeed. She thought that he was rude to her and wanted to take him out without being seen to wield a knife. And look, maybe he was. She was agreed by the way that she'd been treated when she was a junior minister with him.

28:32They didn't chime. And chemistry matters a lot. And she had her own views about how she was going to do the job better. I think that we've now seen 18 months, 21 months of her. and people can make their own judgment about, you know, has there been a more coherent Tory vision? I think that no prime minister in history has ever won five general elections on the trot. It was never going to be possible for the Tories to win that general election in 2024. Therefore, if we make that the yardstick, he's a failure, though the points stand about him bringing up the party in the polls. But is it can you make a judgment?