They Say They "Protect Women and Children". X Paid Them Nearly £68,000
Four MPs. 691 hours. A platform facilitating abuse. And a silence that tells you everything.
Yesterday, I wrote about why the UK government must leave X. Today - one day on - the government is still on X.
Pressure does seem to be mounting, with The Telegraph yesterday noting that a full-on ban could come into effect - which, quite insanely, led to a US Congresswoman threatening to sanction not only Keir Starmer but the UK as a whole if Musk’s platform gets banned. Make of that what you will.
As it stands though, the accounts are still there.
But while the debate rages about whether government departments should withdraw from a platform now actively facilitating the mass creation of non-consensual sexual images of women and children1, there’s another layer to this scandal that deserves far more scrutiny:
Individual MPs who aren’t just using X or present on it - they’re being paid by it.
Full disclosure - I personally made some money on X. Or rather, I did. I earned £198.75 from X before I left the platform in September last year. That money has now been donated to Refuge2, because I could not in good conscience keep a single copper penny earned from a platform that has become an industrialised abuse machine.
Four MPs, however, have earned considerably more - and they show no signs of stopping. These four men - Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe, Richard Tice and Lee Anderson - are all either Reform or formerly Reform. They’re also MPs who have built their political brands on protecting women and children3. All of them have repeatedly invoked “protecting our children” in speeches, television appearances, press-conferences4 and social media posts. Reform UK’s manifesto explicitly pledged to “protect women and girls” and crack down on online harms.
Yet between them, X has paid these self-proclaimed defenders of women and children £67,876.155 since the start of this parliament for producing content on a platform that now enables the mass creation of non-consensual sexual images of women and minors. An amount that can, admittedly, be fobbed off as “small fry” - but the hypocrisy cannot.
What is much harder to dismiss, though, is the time investment. According to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, these four men have collectively spent 691 hours working for X. That amount of hours, even over 18 months is not casual engagement or incidental posting - it’s sustained, declared labour for Elon Musk’s platform.
At the current rate of approximately £48.166 an hour that our MPs are paid, this works out to £33,275.73 of taxpayer money. In terms of total hours spent at a standard 37.5 hour working week, that’s just over 18.5 weeks of time. That’s nearly five months spent producing content for a privately owned social media platform that facilitates abuse of the very people these MPs claim to protect - time that could not, by definition, have been spent doing the job that these men were elected to do.
Hours: 218 - Paid: £12,926.43 - Hourly Rate: £59.30
Out of these four men, Nigel Farage accounts for the single largest share of hours in this group - a fact that feels rather unsurprising given his already well-established pattern of behaviour when it comes to actually showing up to the House of Commons or his own constituency to do actual parliamentary work.
Farage has spent 218 hours of declared work since July 2024 for X, while simultaneously maintaining one of the poorest attendance records in Parliament, which echoes his same work ethic that he had as an MEP.
His most recent little foray in “Anything but the HOC” was just this week when he decided to skip PMQs and go on a podcast instead7 to comment on the happenings - which to my mind is an almost perfect encapsulation of his approach to parliamentary democracy - something to observe, critique and monetise from a distance rather than actually participate in.
Hours: 120 - Paid: £44,996.77 - Hourly Rate: £374.97
Rupert Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth with a penchant for causing minor international incidents through shouting at charity rowers that he confused for an invading force of migrants is very strongly first in line in terms of his income generated from X, but last in line with regards to hours spent. This does mean however that he is working for X at a rate of approximately £374.97 an hour - which is, let’s be honest, a nice job if you can get it.
The income is not incidental - over the course of this parliament, it has been structured, regular and sustained, and at nearly £7k more than the national median wage, completely grotesque.
Hours: 203 - Paid: £3,541.95 - Hourly Rate: £17.45
“30p” Lee Anderson loves a sermon on discipline, a good lecture about hard work and about people needing to “pull their weight” is pretty much a central pillar of his own unique political brand - and yet, since the start of this parliament, Mr Anderson has managed to log nearly 203 hours of working for X, earning a decent (though not Lowe level) £3,540.
That 203 hours that he spent on X shouting about all and sundry works out in his case to five working weeks not spent on constituency casework, legislative scrutiny or parliamentary presence.
Hours: 150 - Paid: £6,411.00 - Hourly Rate: £42.74
Richard Tice, partner of Isab El-Oakeshott, and long styled straight talking outsider’s Register of Interests is a man who presents himself as principled. Tough on crime, disorder and anything really that offends his sense of propriety.
What he does not, however, advertise quite as loudly is that he has spent nearly 150 paid hours working for Elon Musk since he was elected to the House of Commons, earning £6,411.00 for his time. Looking at the working week calculation again, that works out to roughly four working weeks. Principled, perhaps - but principles, it seems, have a price tag of £42.74 an hour.
None of this is accidental, and none of these men can claim, with a straight face, that they do not know what the platform they’re on has turned into.
Every hour that they have logged and payment they’ve accepted, reflects a conscious decision about where their attention, their effort and tolerance are directed towards. These MPs did not just fail to notice what X has become, they chose to keep earning money off of it despite what it’s become.
That choice is incredibly important, because it exposes just how incredibly hollow their politics are.
Each of these men is quick to moralise when harm fits their preferred political narratives, yet when real, documented, active danger is enabled by a platform that pays them handsomely, outrage gives way to thunderous silence.
For men who proclaim themselves champions of the safety of women and children, they are in a position which paints them exactly as they are. X did not force any of them to post, and Elon Musk didn’t compel them to log their hours. They are on X because it is useful, ideologically comfortable and, of course, very lucrative.
If the UK government’s decision to remain on X sends a troubling message, these four MPs choosing to make money off of it sends a far clearer, and far more sinister one.
They are saying that not all harms are equal. They are saying that not all victims are the same. They are saying that, quite frankly, they do not give a shit.
Today, I paid back the money I earned on X. I could not justify keeping it.
Ask yourself how likely it is that these four men will do the same8?
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A sentence that still leaves me utterly horrified everytime I read it which, reader, is the correct response.
This particular phrase, “protecting women and children” is one that can mean pretty much almost anything, provided it never actually involves listening to women or protecting actual children.
So. Many. Press-conferences.
The 15p is included for accuracy, not because it meaningfully improves the situation.
Worked out on £93,904 a year - this does not include any allowances.
To note, this is in no way a criticism of podcasting, rather it is a criticism of being elected to Parliament and treating Parliament as less important than a podcast.
The answer is most likely to be “probably not”, but, as ever, I am of course open to being pleasantly surprised.
and the other day Farage said he would rather do his radio show than "sit in the Commons and be abused by a failing Prime Minister without any right of reply". These people are shameless they don’t care about people… they are grifters…
Farage should have his MP salary deducted. He’s rarely in parliament or in Clacton.