As Tommy Robinson’s rally to “Unite the Kingdom” began, and his house band began to praise Jesus, the sky opened. The rain fell first slowly and then torrentially. It felt prophetic.
Over a decade ago, Robinson could attract crowds of maybe a few thousand. But swelling down Whitehall on Saturday, undeterred by the rain, were more than 100,000 people. Nominally a protest in support of freedom of speech, they had come to see the far-Right activist cap off a summer of asylum protests and surging nationalism.
Accompanying the flags was a strongly Christian vibe. Marchers held crosses and photos of the recently murdered Charlie Kirk as though they were devotional images of a saint. “This is the beginning of two revivals: political and cultural,” Bishop Ceirion Dewar told me. Christian ministers of many denominations had visited Robinson during his multiple stretches in prison, Dewar claimed. And over the past few years, faith has played an ever-greater role in Robinson’s campaigning. In part, this provides theological ballast and historical context to his opposition to Islam. But it also helps him solicit donations from America, where Christian nationalism is a rising force.
If the atmosphere among those bearing flags and wearing medieval helmets was electric, the lineup was singularly eccentric. The insurgent French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour — appealing to Britain and France’s shared history while declining to speak a word of English — was followed by Blocksy, a Luton mate of Robinson’s called up to sing “Sweet Caroline”. The crowd was then lectured by a 13-year-old who had been sent home from school for wearing a Union Jack dress.
On stage Robinson himself was a volatile presence, all rictus grin and jabbing limbs. He hugged, kissed, and leapt about. It was a physical manifestation of his role in the movement. For two decades, he has been the first to pick a fight and to throw a punch — an urge that has enabled him to rise far above any other figure within British politics to the right of Reform.
“Can Robinson channel this amorphous rebellion into political influence?”
And if there is one reason for his surging popularity now, it is a sense that he has been vindicated by events. After 20 years of campaigning against Islam — Robinson led his first protest against the “Luton Taliban” back in 2004 — only now, he argues, is the rest of the country catching up. “When people say I’m guilty of things, yeah, I’m guilty of being a decade ahead,” he told the Triggernometry podcast last month.
Vindicated too are those core supporters who have followed him over the years, in and out of jail, and who were there on Saturday. At the back of the stage was Guramit Singh Kalirai, a former EDL member sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison in 2013 for threatening to slash a shop worker’s throat during an attempted robbery. At the front of the stage, as the event’s compere, was Liam Tuffs, a podcaster and security firm boss, whose father, Peter Gillett, was described by gangster Reggie Kray as his “adopted son”.
Also present was Ezra Levant, the Canadian founder of guerrilla broadcaster Rebel Media, which promoted Robinson early on and continues to run online fundraisers for the activist. But some of this funding has dried up. When I contacted one American donor earlier this week, he told me his organisation had cut all ties with Robinson. While they supported his work campaigning against Islam, they were horrified by his conviction for libelling a Syrian schoolboy and had found him to be deeply unscrupulous. “He’s a son of a bitch and I want nothing to do with him,” the American said. “I’d be happy if I never had to speak to him again in my life.”
Even so, Robinson’s influence has far from faded. Over this summer, protests against asylum seeker accommodation across Britain have borne his imprimatur, if not his presence. In July, when I asked a young man demonstrating outside a London hotel why he had turned out he immediately referred to Robinson. In Epping, when demonstrations first pitched into violence, men attempting to tear the Bell Hotel’s sign from its foundations chanted “Tommy Robinson” over and over.
The question now is whether Robinson can channel this amorphous rebellion into political influence. Britain’s mainstream parties have always maintained that he is beyond the pale. Gawain Towler, a long-time Nigel Farage aide, told me he found him to be a “quite articulate and bright young man”. But, he added: “there’s a peripheral aspect of what Tommy does that is unsavoury and the history of some of his key supporters is unsavoury. We cannot afford to be associated with something like that. It would be a boon to the haters.”
One man with no such scruples is Ben Habib, a former Brexit Party MEP who broke from Reform to launch Advance UK because Farage would not at that time back “mass deportations”. Habib’s party now counts Robinson among its 32,000 members. As Habib arrived at Saturday’s rally, which he co-sponsored, demonstrators stretched out to shake his hand and thrust baseball caps for him to sign. Someone held a handwritten “Ben for Number 10” sign aloft. Standing at the side of the stage, he told me he was keen to win votes from any constituency available. “Why would any politician turn down the opportunity to speak to the British people?” he asked.
Did he not share the concerns of other politicians about Robinson’s criminal convictions and hard-Right allies? “What Farage and others are trying to do is to vilify the British people,” he replied. “They’ve said they don’t want to engage with [Robinson’s supporters]. What kind of democratic politician eschews the votes that he would otherwise get? It’s an incredibly high-handed approach to democracy.”
In America, there have been fewer scruples. After buying X in 2022, Elon Musk laid the critical plank for Robinson’s return to prominence when he restored his account the following year — a step multiple speakers acknowledged on Saturday. And then, from the man himself, an open call to arms. “If this continues, that violence is going to come to you, you will have no choice,” Musk told the crowd via video link. “You either fight back or you die, that’s the truth, I think.”
One critical American was missing, however. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, has long expressed his desire to create a “nationalist international” of politicians critical of liberalism and is a strong supporter of Robinson. But even without him, the appearance of Zemmour, Alternative für Deutschland’s Petr Bystron, Romania’s George Simion and others of similar political stripe from around the continent meant that the outlines of a new global order could be glimpsed.
Many among them expressed straightforwardly far-Right arguments. “Islam is our real enemy,” claimed Filip Dewinter, a Flemish nationalist and long-time Robinson ally. “We have to get Islam out of Europe.” Wearing a GENERATION REMIGRATION t-shirt, the Dutch Eva Vlaaringerbroek railed against the “great replacement” of white Europeans. Brian Tamaki, a Maori preacher from New Zealand who has been accused of running a cult, called for all mosques and temples to be shut down in Christian countries.
Valentina Gomez, a Congressional candidate who has filmed herself burning the Quran and attacking gay people as “faggots” is also a full-throated supporter. Speaking on Saturday after flying in from Texas, she attacked “rapist Muslims”. I found her taking photographs with her English fans. A young man whose Horatio Nelson t-shirt was struggling to contain his vast belly lent in to tell her breathlessly that he loved her videos, but that she would probably be arrested for them in Britain. “Keep fighting for your country,” she said. “Christ is King.” When I asked Gomez where she felt this international movement was really headed, she was unequivocal. “Tommy Robinson is the present and the future.”
Robinson had struck a similarly triumphant tone himself earlier this week when speaking to Britain First leader Paul Golding. “It’s a cultural revolution — it’s happening, it’s actually happening,” he said. “Something’s burst. The dam’s broke.”
In reality, however, Robinson’s relationship with the minor revolt sweeping Britain is more complex than he might like to acknowledge. At the height of the EDL’s popularity, marches were marked by alcohol and casual violence. In 2011, two members were convicted of attempting to burn down a mosque in Stoke-on-Trent. In 2015, 50 people were sentenced for violence committed at a Birmingham protest. The public at large was aghast. But the asylum hotel protests are different. They have mobilised mainstream local residents, including large numbers of women, where the EDL appalled them. Acknowledging that he is liable to do more harm than good to this cause, Robinson decided to stay away from Epping, even after announcing that he would organise a march.
The former hooligan from Luton might remain an ideological lodestar for many, but he still alienates others. As a result, the emergent wave of nationalism is far more amorphous than Robinson might have liked. The movement has power in part because it has no leaders that can be discredited or imprisoned.
The London rally, then, with its parade of international politicians and gaudy production, felt in some respects like a retreat from the real battleground. Supporters had come from around the country for inspiration and ideological support. But whether Robinson can lead them further remains an open question.
