Media Addresses the Keir Starmer “Rent Boys” Smear

The i Paper has a useful overview by Lizzie Dearden of how the Keir Starmer “rent boy” conspiracy theory spread on social media following acts of arson at properties linked to the prime minister: Less than 15 minutes after [Roman] Lavrynovych was arrested, and before the arrest was made public by the police, an account on X describing itself as a British “patriot” claimed to have the answer. “Angry unpaid rent boy,” it wrote in reply to a British news aggregator with more than 400,000 followers, which had reported the latest blaze. No source for the false claim was provided, but after the police announced the arrest five hours later, the same account repeated the allegation in response to a prominent British far-right influencer. That influencer, who has around 340,000 followers, including Elon Musk, went on to post the “rent boy” narrative himself. The news aggregator concerned, @PoliticsUK, posted at 4.06 pm on 12 May, and the “patriot” reply appeared at 2.02 am on 13 May. The reply…