Tommy Robinson is an angry man: angry at Islam and migration into Britain, angry at the BBC and “mainstream media”. He claims to be angry over antisemitism. He’s often angry about the way police have treated him.
He’s confessed to wasting money on alcohol and partying while receiving thousands of pounds in donations; he’s been in court and in prison – and yet he has huge numbers of devoted followers online.
On Saturday, around 110,000 people gathered in London for a “free speech” rally dubbed “Unite the Kingdom” that was spearheaded by Robinson, according to estimates from the Metropolitan Police.
A sea of flags could be seen in the crowd, including the St George’s Cross, the Union flag, the Scottish saltire and Welsh dragon, with others carrying wooden crosses with “Christ” written on and singing Christian songs. Chants in support of Robinson could be heard alongside “f*** Keir Starmer” and “Keir Starmer is a w***er”.
The demonstrators marched from near Waterloo to the south side of Whitehall, while a counter-protest, dubbed March Against Fascism, organised by Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) also took place, but on the north side of Whitehall, with around 5,000 people attending, according to Met estimates.
The two groups exchanged angry words and stared each other down. A group of “Unite the Kingdom” protesters even attempted to enter the sterile area in place to keep the two demonstrations apart, with projectiles launched at officers as they resorted to using force to prevent their cordon from being breached.
Robinson said the “revolution is on” in a video posted to X where he claimed his “Unite the Kingdom” rally was the largest demonstration in British history, which does not stand up against the Met’s estimates.
Robinson, who is one of the most provocative figures in the UK today, made his name – and a career – from being a right-wing activist.
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – his real name – grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire, which had a large Muslim minority, and in 2004, he joined the far-right British National Party, but left a year later.
He was apprenticed as an aircraft engineer at the town’s airport, but was sentenced to a year in jail after he assaulted an off-duty police officer during a drunken row in 2005.
With a group of like-minded young men, he founded the English Defence League (EDL) in 2009, reportedly having been angered by local Islamists trying to recruit men in Luton to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
When riots erupted in English cities in summer 2024, police suspected the EDL, which has links to football hooliganism, of having initially incited the violence.
Robinson stood down as the group’s leader in 2013, citing fears over the “dangers of far-right extremism”. The same year, he publicly apologised to Muslim communities and offered to give evidence to the police to aid their investigation into EDL members.
In 2018, he was jailed for 13 months for breaking contempt of court laws with a Facebook Live video that could have prejudiced a trial.
He was already subject to a suspended sentence for committing contempt during a rape trial in Canterbury the year before.
Three years later, as The Independent investigated reports he misused donors’ cash, he shouted abuse at the home of the journalist involved, defamed her partner and threatened to return. Convicted of stalking, he was banned from contacting them for five years.
In 2022, he spent £100,000 gambling before declaring bankruptcy, the High Court heard.
Robinson said he also owed £160,000 to HM Revenue and Customs when he declared himself bankrupt a year earlier, but later said this was an estimate.
At one point he was spending about £100,000 on gambling in casinos and online, wasting money on “drink, alcohol, partying” while receiving thousands of pounds in donations from supporters, he told the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
In 2020, he received about £1,000 a month from supporters but that at times that figure was between £3,000 and £4,000, he said.
Asked about a claim in his 2009 book Enemy of the State that he owned seven properties but that six of them were in his wife’s name, he said: “I had a ghost writer that helped me with the book. I like to give off that I am a successful man when I am not.”
In November 2023, he was accused of failing to follow a police order to leave an antisemitism march in London. In a trial attended by many of his supporters, he was cleared after a Metropolitan Police officer who signed the order admitted it may not have been lawful because he used the wrong date on the paperwork.
Amid the far-right riots in summer 2024, Robinson organised what he claimed would be the “biggest patriotic rally the UK has ever seen”. Thousands of Robinson’s supporters gathered in central London for the counter-protest to a Stand Up To Racism march.
But Robinson missed his own event after being arrested in July 2024 under anti-terror laws over allegations he breached a 2021 High Court order. The order banned Robinson from repeating libellous allegations he made against Syrian refugee Jamal Hijazi.
Robinson was later jailed for 18 months in October 2024. In April 2025, Tommy Robinson lost an appeal to reduce his jail term over claims prison segregation was “making him ill”. However, he was released in May 2025, after his sentence was reduced by four months at the High Court.
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