It’s been an eventful few months on the Tommy Robinson front since Searchlight last went to press. He has orchestrated two national rallies in London, only one of which he was able to attend, gone on the run in a number of European countries, come back, been jailed, and may now be forging a political alliance with the new look Christian-nationalist UKIP. Read on …

Some 15,000 are estimated to have attended his end of July “Unite the Kingdom” rally in Westminster. As always, the date was chosen to fall close to a court appearance, in this case, a contempt of court hearing arising from the libel action he lost in 2021 over allegations he made against a Syrian schoolboy. When the boy and his family sued for libel, they were awarded £100,000 in damages. Robinson, aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also had to pay costs and was made subject to an injunction not to repeat the allegations. This is absolutely normal procedure in a successful libel case. But it was not one with which Robinson had any intention of complying.

He went on to repeat the allegations in a documentary he claimed he had nothing to do with, but Hope Not Hate assembled a dossier of evidence demonstrating clearly that he was deeply involved. That evidence went to the Attorney General who decided that it merited prosecution. Then, Robinson went one further: he showed the documentary at the July rally in Whitehall in an open and flagrant contempt of court. Further charges were inevitably added to the charge sheet.

Instead of facing the charges, he skipped the country. But that only added to his problems. His first attempt to flee, crossing the channel by Eurotunnel, ended up with him refusing to co-operate with a port police search, by not handing over the PIN to his phone. This led to him being arrested and bailed on suspicion of an offence under the Terrorism Act. He skipped back to London, jumped on a Eurostar train and headed off to Europe again, this time successfully.

Rest and recreation

As Searchlight has had cause to point out before, Robinson enjoys Irish citizenship and travels on an Irish passport. This allows the fervent Brexit supporter to spend as much time as he likes in Europe – and he takes full advantage of this, based for most of the year in the south of Spain tanning himself and indulging his favoured mood-modifying recreational pursuits.

This time he ended up in a luxury resort in Ayia Napa in Cyprus where he stretched out on his sunbed and relaxed until he was tracked down and photographed, whereupon he skipped off again, this time to Athens.

By now, however, England was becoming engulfed in the racist riots, which broke out after the dreadful murder of three young girls in Southport. Robinson’s racist street-gang mates were in the thick of it and one of his lieutenants, Danny Tommo, went online to directly incite violence: “Every city must go up!” he ranted. Robinson was more circumspect, but streaming from his sun lounger he betrayed his evident satisfaction as the anti-Muslim hatred he has been cultivating for years erupted into a festival of racist violence.

He eventually ended up in one of his favourite hidey-holes, Benidorm in Spain, where he sunned himself until his return at the end of October.

By this time, he was in legal jeopardy on two fronts: the contempt charges were almost certainly going to get him jailed; but now there was also a potential Terrorism Act charge looming. He had to answer bail on the Terrorism Act matter on Friday 25 October and appear in court on the contempt charges on Monday 28th.

True to form, he tried to put pressure on the authorities by convening his next London “Unite the Kingdom” demonstration for the weekend in between those two dates. It had originally been scheduled for two weeks earlier, on 12 October, but was moved to the end of the month at his insistence.

Bailed and banged up

In the meantime, online, Robinson pleaded with his gullible supporters to pump money into his “legal fund” and issued thinly veiled threats to the authorities – and Keir Starmer in particular – that his “movement” would be furious were he to be jailed.

It didn’t play out quite as he had hoped. When he arrived at Folkestone police station to answer bail on the Friday, the day before the rally, he was charged with an offence under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, and bailed. But an arrest warrant was then executed for the contempt charges. This meant he was banged up in custody and would not be attending his Saturday event.

The rally went ahead anyway, but attracting only the same sort of numbers as the July demo – some 15,000‑20,000 – it was not the mass outpouring of outraged racist sentiment that he had been counting on. The mood was downbeat, the speakers were largely dull, and thousands did not even bother to hang around to see his latest documentary offering on a big screen. Then, on the Monday, appearing at Woolwich Crown Court, he was sent down for 18 months, with the judge’s words that “no-one is above the law” ringing in his ears.

The fact that he chose to plead guilty to all 10 contempt charges did not play well with many sections of the far right. For months he had been pleading for funds for his legal case, assuring everyone that he was going to fight it even if this was expensive. In the end, he surrendered and went off to jail quietly, but with some £100,000 pocketed and money still pouring in. Organised far-right groups like Patriotic Alternative and Alek Yerbury’s National Rebirth Party led the charge, accusing him of using the case to line his own pocket.

Sneaky stunt

There has, however, been one significant political development out of all this.

When she resigned as leader of UKIP during the general election campaign, Lois Perry said that one reason she was quitting was that there was something “sinister” going on “at the very top of the party”, where some people “wanted to go after quite an extreme viewpoint”.

Specifically, she said, they wanted a tie-up with Tommy Robinson. That now appears to be happening. Her successor, convicted thug Nick Tenconi, has been driving UKIP in a new direction, as a party of the Christian nationalist new right. But it has been haemorrhaging members over the past year and its leaders, Tenconi and chairman Ben Walker, have been looking enviously at Robinson’s ability to raise large sums of money, seemingly with little effort.

Only days before returning to the UK, Robinson said in an online interview: “UKIP are far stronger than any other political party. I believe that Nick has shown great leadership … You need a people’s party that is not going to kick the working class and not going to deem them as racist and far right which [Reform UK leader] Nigel Farage has done multiple times.

“I like UKIP. I actually messaged the lads … Nick [Tenconi] and …Ben Walker, to have a discussion with them.”

Robinson made clear that he has no time for Reform UK, because Farage does not oppose “demographic replacement” and is not committed to “mass deportations”.

“I thought, ‘let Reform be the political party and us be the cultural movement’. But I saw Nigel Farage’s cowardice in the week of taking over, saw him select the Muslim, who funded him the most money, to be the chairman, and I thought, ‘well you’re never going to deal with the Islamisation of this nation’.

“So there does need to be a political party that pushes them, so maybe UKIP’s that solution … I hope to meet the boys when I get back if I’m not in jail.”

UKIP posted this endorsement online adding, laughably, “UKIP stands firmly with Tommy and the British working class”.

Then, only days before the London rally, UKIP Chairman Walker announced the names of the people who would be filling the 11 vacancies on the UKIP NEC. One of those was Richard Inman, Tommy Robinson’s main fixer and the organiser of his London rallies. The platform at the rally was stuffed with UKIP faces. Two of them, leader Nick Tenconi and the party’s Wales spokesman Stan Robinson, one half of the racist Voice of Wales (VoW) online blog and also recently appointed to the NEC, were allowed to speak.

Shamelessly, they also allowed Dan Morgan, Welsh UKIP activist and the other half of VoW, to parade on the platform, despite the fact he is a recently convicted fraudster, involved in a scam that robbed many elderly and vulnerable people of their savings.

Both Stan Robinson and Morgan had been hanging out with Robinson in Spain, and accompanied him on the plane when he flew back to the UK.

Stan Robinson used the platform to echo Tommy Robinson in slagging off Farage and Reform UK. They all know that most of their followers voted Reform in the general election so, if they are going to build a new popular racist party, they have to put clear water between them. Calvin Robinson, the right-wing “reverend” who is both on the UKIP NEC and a chum of Tommy Robinson, used his last interview before hopping off to the US to similarly bash Farage.

We can expect the attacks on Farage to become more frequent and vociferous if this unsavoury political marriage between UKIP and Tommy Robinson develops, and they struggle to compete with Reform UK for support from the Islamophobes and racists who threw their votes behind Farage in the general election.