An alleged recording of Danny Tommo, posted by a right-wing online agitator, appears to reveal that Tommy Robinson’s ‘Mini-Me’ was demanding for himself a cut of funds raised from gullible supporters for anti-migrant activities.
In the audio, published on the Daily Agenda YouTube channel (presented by former BNP organiser and Elections Officer Simon Tomlin), an irate Tommo can be heard apparently demanding payments from Raise the Colours (RtC), the mass flagging campaign he launched with Ryan Bridge last autumn under the guise of phony patriotism.
“Put aside what we are doing here, Overlord, RtC, the cause; I am the father to three fucking kids, and I have to have an income,” Tommo berated an unidentified person during the call. It is unclear when the recording was made, though Tommo alludes to his bitter falling out with RtC, which Searchlight revealed in January.
Offer me money
In the call, Tommo claimed he needed money to pay his rent and bills: “All the donations are going to RtC’s bank account, and I’m stressing and worried about money. Fuck that, that’s not how it works.
“If we are a team, offer me a salary, offer me some money… Boom! RtC is looking after me. Boom! RtC is looking after my kids and my rent.”
You can listen to the recording here:
As the call continues, Tommo grows increasingly irate as he presses for a piece of RtC’s donations. Despite bragging on social media that he runs a highly successful roofing business, he paints a rather different picture here.
“I’m a businessman, and I ain’t got a business at the moment… I’m happy to become RtC, but RtC aren’t offering me anything,” he moaned.
Soured relations
Since the souring of relations with RtC, Tommo (real name Daniel Thomas) — a longtime Robinson sidekick who sports a conviction for kidnap at knifepoint after a drugs deal went wrong — has been desperately trying to launch his own far-right brand as the scourge of asylum seekers.
In April, in an attempt to boost his YouTube profile and marketability as a rage entrepreneur, he has been roaming the port at Dover, filming himself abusing asylum seekers who have crossed the Channel, insulting and being aggressive to port workers and security staff, and attempting to gain entry to asylum processing facilities before being summarily ejected.
This English farce reached its climax on 6 April, when Tommo clambered over a couple of fences on Port Authority land in the hope of reaching a dockside pier from which to film asylum seekers rescued at sea. He rambled on for over an hour on a YouTube livestream, but the English Channel provided no victims for his white nationalist invective.
Dover Harbour Police, however, did show up.
Pitiful charade
After a pitiful charade of claiming he was looking for his lost dog, Tommo was clapped in handcuffs and the camera went dead before he was bundled into a police vehicle. He was arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass and has yet to be charged.
In the early hours of the following morning, Tommo delivered his own epilogue to his day of ignominy via Facebook. He had been kept in the cells until 2 a.m., he said, and his performative rabble-rousing had earned him a ban from entering Dover, Folkestone and Ramsgate.
While at the station, he was also subjected to a strip search.
“They did it to humiliate me, but I complied because I just wanted to get out of there,” he admitted.
Tommo attempted to shrug off the latest debacle. “I will not be going back to Dover — for any police officers watching, I will not be going back to Folkestone, I will not be going back to Ramsgate.
“What I will be doing is going on the water,” he said, alluding to his latest far-right vigilante daydream, which he is inviting witless supporters to bankroll.
Hare-brained scheme
Now he is panhandling for donations to fund a hare-brained scheme to purchase a boat and cruise the English Channel confronting boatloads of asylum seekers — all to be livestreamed, naturally, for maximum social media clout.
Details remain vague, but Tommo has shared his Action Man fantasies about acquiring a “700-horsepower hi-tech boat” captained by “some guy, ex-special forces, who knows what he is doing.”
“If it goes wrong, we don’t want to get caught. We’re not going to do anything illegal, but if it does go that way, we want to be able to get out of there,” he jabbered to his live audience at Dover on 6 April.
Many appear to have bought into the pipe-dream, if the comment stream was anything to go by, with followers egging him on and suggesting the boat be christened “Britannia” or “Operation Overload”. The odd voice of realism ventured that it all sounded a bit “random”.
The first two fundraisers — which raised more than £20,000 — appear to have been refunded to donors after multiple complaints to the fundraising platforms.
Cadge money
But it seems the plan to cadge money from the anti-immigrant white nationalist echo chamber may finally have borne fruit, with Tommo claiming he has now raised £16,000 towards a RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat).
Last Saturday he said he would purchase the boat later that week and livestream the transaction to guarantee transparency. Despite him streaming from a boatyard where various such vessels were up for sale, that is yet to happen.
And, of course, whether any of the money raised will be allocated to pay for “looking after my kids and my rent” remains to be seen.
Operation Overlord has been a far-right circus since its inception.
French farce
In November, Tommo teamed up with Ryan Bridge, co-founder of the Birmingham-based anti-immigrant flag obsessives Raise the Colours. They talked a good game about how Operation Overlord would wage war on refugees and migrants in France and repel the “small boat invasion”, the Men of England, standing firm where governments had failed.
These activities marked an escalation in cross-border far-right vigilantism, encouraged by a stream of social media posts and videos of activists harassing asylum seekers and interfering with Channel crossings.
Fleeing from camp
But once in northern France, Tommo and Bridge ended up fleeing, tails between their legs, from a refugee camp where they had tried to throw their weight around. In January, the French authorities issued territorial bans on ten British far-right activists, including Bridge and Tommo, barring them from entering or remaining in France.
The black comedy ended, as ever, in far-right infighting, the tawdry players falling out amid the usual accusations of betrayal.
