Tommy Robinson’s hyper-agitated behaviour during his Dubai confrontation with boxer Ty Mitchell has prompted much speculation about the possible cause of his super-energised condition.
Indeed, it is the same question we asked about some of the videos he posted (usually from abroad) last year during and after the Southport riots.
In one particularly paranoid post from a Cyprus hotel he ranted “You can see they’re coming for me. I know they’re coming for me. They want to lock me up…”
Artificially energised
And we observed that “Eyes wide, veins bulging, he shows every sign of having er, artificially energised himself before the broadcast”.
It has been suggested by some – without substantiation, we should add – that his antics in Dubai might have been similarly induced.
Such rumours do, sometimes, have a kernel of truth, and in the case of Robinson (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) they are bolstered by a concrete trail of evidence.
Corroboration
The clearest corroboration came from Yaxley-Lennon himself. In a leaked video published by The Sun in 2019, he was seen bragging to associates about his drug-seeking habits.
He boasted, “No matter where I’ve gone in the world, I score… I’ve gone to f***ing Qatar, to Doha, and scored gear on the sesh while they’re all praying.
“Everywhere, mate, every city I’ve gone to.”
He attempted to dismiss these comments as drunken banter, but the terms of his denial did little to erase the credibility of the admission: “I was absolutely steamboated” he said “I don’t even remember…”
Criminal record
And then there is the legal record.
His criminal convictions include a 2014 conviction for possessing 3.48 grams of cocaine with intent to supply. This, of course, fits within a well-documented, decades-long pattern of criminality that includes convictions for assault, fraud, using a false passport, stalking, and multiple instances of contempt of court.
Lucy Brown, a one-time Robinson ally, has spoken publicly about her experience working with Robinson and his inner circle.
She described “the drink and drugs binges” she witnessed during her time around Robinson and people close to him.
She said there was a “darkness to her experience” and said these episodes were some of the “sleazier moments” while working with him.
Drug-fuelled binge
But most eye-watering were the allegations made by Bethan Nodwell, a leading Canadian far-right figure and close acquaintance of Robinson’s, who organised his abortive speaking tour of Canada in August last year, where he ended up arrested in Calgary for passport irregularities.
She fell out bitterly with Robinson because of his behaviour whilst she was working on his behalf.
In a video interview posted online, she alleged that a dinner outing with Robinson had descended into an alcohol- and drug-fuelled binge during which Robinson went missing and was later located in a “massage parlour”.
Hypocrisy
As we wrote at the time: “His actions exposed the hypocrisy that many have accused him of for years – that the self-styled protector of women and girls from grooming gangs is nothing but a fraud.
“As Nodwell pointed out in her interview the day after Robinson was arrested: ‘If you are doing drugs with prostitutes, you aren’t defending women.’”
Taken together, these accounts do not amount to proof of what lay behind any single outburst or episode. But they do form a consistent picture: of a man whose public moralising sits uneasily alongside a trail of admissions, convictions and testimony from former allies.
And, as far as we can determone, he has never taken action against anyone making thes allegations.
All of this sits particularly uneasily beside his recent, new found religiosity and embrace of Christianity.
Pattern
Whether in court records, leaked bravado, or the words of those who once worked at his side, the pattern is hard to ignore.
The question, then, is not merely what fuels Tommy Robinson’s moments of manic intensity, but why so many are still prepared to take his claims of virtue and victimhood at face value, when the evidence repeatedly points in the opposite direction.
