No sooner had Keir Starmer dealt with a damaging outbreak of violence at home than he found himself in another fight as the rhetorical target of powerful “Broligarchs” who dominate America’s powerful New Right.

That grouping entails a network of “tech bro” titans ranging from Peter Thiel to Elon Musk, and their protégé, JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate.

Musk and Trump are making common cause as an alignment. They conducted a brotherly interview this week re-cementing ties, for the price of Trump warming to Musk’s advocacy, as Tesla founder, for electric vehicles. In return, this gives the former president access to X (formerly Twitter) and a key supporter if he fails to win the White House and contests the election.

But why does Starmer, a Labour leader who does not exactly rock the international stage with attention-grabbing ideas or charisma, attract so much negative attention in this quarter? The answer tells us a lot about the belief system of some of the world’s most powerful and unaccountable people. And about where Britain fits into a battle of ideas across the Atlantic.

The billionaire owner of X spearheads a movement which flies under the banner of free speech, but tips into a no-holds-barred defence of platforming views – views which are often not only extreme in themselves, but which have been proven in Britain’s summer of disorder to drive real and damaging outcomes on the streets.

For Musk, these events (perversely) prove that “civil war is inevitable”. Starmer has been careful in wording his rebuttal, namely that there was “no justification” for the........

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