Jess Phillips has taken a swipe at Elon Musk’s social media site X and labelled it ‘a bit despotic’ and ‘a place of misery now’.
The UK government minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, spoke out in the wake of a spat between UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the platform’s boss.
Her intervention comes after the social media tycoon called the PM ‘two-tier Keir’, as he posted a series of images, videos and memes related to recent rioting in the UK, with Mr Musk suggesting that not all communities are ‘protected in Britain’.
Downing Street had already criticised Mr Musk for tweeting that ‘civil war is inevitable’ in the UK, with Sir Keir’s official spokesman insisting there was ‘no justification for comments like that’.
Ms Phillips has now waded into the row and said although she had previously been ‘massively addicted to Twitter’, referencing the former name of X, she had removed the app from her phone after Mr Musk took over the company.
Speaking at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the government minister said of the social media platform: ‘Fundamentally for me now I think that I am sort of done with it, I don’t wish to fish in that particular pond any more.’
She told the audience: ‘I used to be massively addicted to Twitter, I have got a very addictive personality, I was massively addicted to it.’
But she added: ‘The only power we now have over what is becoming a bit despotic is that we opt out of it, you vote with your feet in this instance rather than pen and paper.’
Asked by host Matthew Stadlen if she would encourage people to quit the site, she said that would be ‘too dramatic’.
But Ms Phillips said: ‘Personally for me, I don’t think it is a space where there is any fun to be had any more.
‘I don’t think that it is a place of light, I think it is only a place of misery now.’
She added that she did not want to ‘strop off’ and leave the site, but said: ‘I’m just not going to use it very much.’
Speaking about Mr Musk she told the audience: ‘As soon as he took it over I took the app off my phone, so I have to log in to Twitter.
‘So already there is a barrier.’
The comments follow Ms Phillips sharing her concerns about the impact of social media companies more generally.
The Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley said while Mr Musk had ‘every right’ to express his views on British politics as a private citizen, ‘as a commercial citizen, who literally can control the way we see different things, you are getting into a more dangerous area’.
She added: ‘I have for a long time felt quite anxious that there are a number of big companies in the world, most of them tech-based, whether its Twitter, Meta, Amazon as well, where all the films we watch on TV are from these companies.
‘Like literally what we decide we are going to watch comes from them. When I am lying in bed, the next book I am going to read is designed by one of these men.
‘What has worried me is the idea of how much power and money these big companies have without any democratic institution to hold them to account.
‘I have thought for a long time their power would massively outstrip that of democratic governments around the world.
‘And I suppose we are now at the point of seeing whether it actually hits the road and that actually is coming to pass.’
Ms Phillips previously hit headlines on election night after her victory speech where she called the campaign ‘the worst election I have ever stood in’ went viral.
Following her victory of just 693 votes over a pro-Gaza independent, her speech was drowned out by boos and chants of ‘Free Palestine’.
She looked furious and yelled back: ‘I understand that a strong woman standing up to you is met with such reticence’ before asking for the mob to be thrown out, pointing at them and saying: ‘Can you throw them out?’
Jess said that a young woman delivering leaflets for her was filmed by her rivals ‘and screamed at by a much older man’ and then had her tyres slashed.
She also said she declined the help of the family of murdered MP Jo Cox because of the violence in her area.
Ms Phillips’s comments about X come after a war of words between Mr Musk and Downing Street has been raging for the past week.
Mr Musk’s latest salvo involved firing off another barrage of posts today, which said: ‘It’s 2030 in the UK & you’re being executed for posting a meme’.
He earlier compared the UK to the Soviet Union because of arrests over what people have been saying on Facebook as riots break out across the UK.
He even shared a Family Guy meme and joked that Britain might bring back the death penalty for social media posts that offend politicians. Posting an image of Peter Griffin in the electric chair he said: ‘In 2030 for making a Facebook comment that the UK government didn’t like’.
He also retweeted a meme showing armed police confronting a woman over her social media messages, adding: ‘Sounds like that is the UK today’.
The billionaire posted a video of a gang in balaclavas waving Palestine flags storming The Clumsy Swan in Birmingham, where windows were smashed and drinkers were attacked.
Musk tweeted footage of the pub attack and tagged the Prime Minister with the caption: ‘Why aren’t all communities protected in Britain, Keir Starmer?’ He also pinned it to his profile so it is the first thing his 193million followers see when on his page.
He has now pinned a post which reads: ‘Freedom of speech is the bedrock of democracy.
‘If the truth is suppressed, it is impossible to make an informed voting decision.
‘The degree to which freedom of speech is being undermined around the world is extremely alarming.’