A Cabinet minister has admitted Elon Musk is ‘accountable to no one’ amid the controversial billionaire’s war of words with Sir Keir Starmer.

The Tesla boss and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, is currently engaged in a angry spat with the Prime Minister over Britain’s riots crisis.

Mr Musk, estimated to be the world’s richest person with a fortune of around $220billion, claimed ‘civil war is inevitable’ following the violence in the UK. 

He also branded Britain’s premier ‘Two Tier Keir’ as he fuelled far-right claims that UK police treat some groups more harshly than others.

Technology Secretary Peter Kyle suggested dealing with powerful tech firms is more akin to diplomacy with other nations than the Government’s usual relationship with businesses.

A Cabinet minister has admitted Elon Musk is ‘accountable to no one’ amid the controversial billionaire’s war of words with Sir Keir Starmer

The Tesla boss and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter , is currently engaged in a angry spat with the Prime Minister over Britain’s riots crisis

Mr Musk used his X social media site, formerly known as Twitter, to reply to a post that blamed ‘mass migration and open borders’ for unrest in the UK

Technology Secretary Peter Kyle suggested dealing with powerful tech firms is more akin to diplomacy with other nations than the Government’s usual relationship with businesses

He told The Times: ‘Elon Musk has the power to have a profound impact the outcome of the war between Russia and Ukraine and he is one person who is accountable to no one.

‘People who know him say, ‘There’s a lot of depth to him. Never underestimate his intellect.’

‘But I also don’t underestimate the impact that he can have, not just on public discourse, but on actual facts on the ground.

‘So, the relationship we have with some of these companies is much more akin to the negotiations with fellow secretaries of state in other countries, simply because of the scale and scope that they have.’

Mr Kyle recently met with representatives of TikTok, Google, X, and Facebook and Instagram owner Meta in the wake of Britain’s riots.

He noted how most major tech firms have their own foreign policies and ‘will decide what their relationship is like with different territories’.

‘The relationship you have to have with them is unlike any relationship any previous administration would have ever had to have with a private sector organisation,’ he added.

‘It doesn’t mean that we go cap in hand. It doesn’t mean that we are disempowered. It just means we have to be sophisticated, and we have to be modern in the way that we interact.

‘We go out as secretaries of state around the world dealing with other states because we want the investment and we want to build relationships.

‘If we could have 5 per cent extra R&D (research and development) spend from Amazon in Britain, that would unleash not thousands or millions, but billions of pounds of investment into our country.’

Downing Street this week hit back at Mr Musk’s intervention over Britain’s riots and said there was ‘no justification’ for his remarks.

Sir Thomas Winsor, who previously served as Her Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, rejected Mr Musk’s suggestion of ‘two-tier policing’ in the UK.

He told LBC radio: ‘Mr Musk it seems to me should stick to batteries, cars and rockets because he’s very good at it and leave to the UK authorities the job of dealing with the protection of the safety and security of our communities.’