Reeves Laughs Off Elon Musk’s Trolling of World Leaders

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves joked about Elon Musk’s online “trolling” of world leaders, in a break from the UK government’s careful efforts to avoid responding to frequent criticism from the close Trump ally. #trump #musk #uk #politics

Britain’s finance minister was discussing the use of technology “to cut out some of the costs in the back-office functions of government,” during an on-stage interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. By cutting costs, she said, the government would be able to do less on tax, provide better public services and invest more in capital project.

But Reeves rejected the analogy when asked whether the UK was going down the same road as Musk, the Tesla boss who US President Donald Trump has installed in an advisory role atop his administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency.

“Well, look, we want to root out waste in government spending,” Reeves replied, with a laugh. “I think maybe the comparison might end there. I’m not going to go troll presidents around the world.”

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been — alongside the leaders of Germany, Canada and other US allies — a repeated target of the world’s richest man’s attacks on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Reeves’ remarks represent the closest thing a senior UK Cabinet minister has come to criticizing Musk, as Labour tries to avoid straining relations with the US president.

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