Tommy Robinson is the assumed name of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a British far-right activist and self-styled "citizen journalist". In 2009 he co-founded the English Defence League (EDL), a football-hooligan-inspired street movement with the slogan "not racist, not violent, just no longer silent"; it was later infiltrated by neo-Nazis and fizzled. He rebranded in 2017 by making videos for Rebel Media, a far-right Canadian outlet.
He has been jailed several times, most notably in 2018 for disrupting a grooming-gangs trial, and was found in contempt of court for repeatedly libelling a Syrian schoolboy. He admitted to losing £100,000 gambling during the libel case. The American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones funded a documentary smearing the same boy. Robert Shillman, a right-wing American tech mogul, was an early backer.
Robinson's brand was supercharged when Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2023: Musk restored his account and pays his legal fees. Steve Bannon has called him the "backbone" of Britain. Some 40% of the millions of #FreeTommy tweets came from America. He is too toxic for Nigel Farage and Reform UK.
A More in Common survey for The Economist found that 14% of Britons view him positively; YouGov finds 29% of British men like him, up from 9% in 2021. Around 48% of Britons think the Muslim population is changing British society in mostly negative ways. Kevin Carroll, Mr Robinson's relative and EDL co-founder, was the original coiner of "two-tier policing", a phrase later picked up by Mr Farage.
In September 2025 a rally he organised drew about 150,000 people in London (he claimed 1m), with a beamed-in speech from Mr Musk—the largest far-right demonstration in British history. He toured America in 2025-26 with a State Department waiver despite his criminal convictions, met congressmen, and visited the State Department.
"The picture's pretty bleak, gentlemen... The world's climates are changing, the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a walnut."