A regional political journalist has hit out at Elon Musk for failing to fact-check “complete and utter b****cks” written by Laurence Fox.

Liverpool Echo political editor Liam Thorp criticised the billionaire after he responded “wow” to an inaccurate claim by actor and right-wing activist Laurence Fox, who published a list of cities in England supposedly run by Muslim mayors.

Among Mr Fox’s claims were that Leeds and Sheffield, neither of which have directly-elected mayors, were run by Muslims.

After Mr Musk’s reply, which appeared to endorse Mr Fox’s claims, Liam took to X, the platform owned by Mr Musk, in order to discredit it.

Liam, pictured, wrote: “Even the most cursory Google could show you that the vast majority of this is complete and utter b****cks.

“But I guess that’s too much to ask of one of the richest people in the world.

“There is no Mayor of Leeds. There’s an apolitical, civic Lord Mayor of Leeds and that’s currently a lady called Al Garthwaite

“There is no Mayor of Sheffield, there’s an apolitical, civic Lord Mayor of Sheffield called Colin Ross.

“Obviously the wider point is a nonsense attempt at stirring up hatred anyway – but the sheer lack of any fact-checking from Musk is remarkable.”

HTFP has approached X for a comment.