Tommy Robinson, the English class clown

In 2013, our recidivist found himself behind bars again, this time for using a friend’s passport to circumvent a travel ban to attend an Islamophobic symposium in the US. Again, in another telenovela-style twist, he recanted, making a big show of quitting the EDL and breaking ranks with Mo Ansar, the disgraced Lloyds Bank employee turned so-called voice of British Islam (one of those dodgy “community leaders”, whatever they are) who Robinson helped “reform”. Profiled in the TelegraphAnsar was described as follows:

“He speaks the language of tolerance and moderation, but he refuses to condemn the cutting off of hands for theft in Islamic states or homophobia… He has creatively and rather dramatically exaggerated his professional experience, including the false claim that he is a lawyer… He runs a puppet Twitter account, which he uses to defend himself and attack perceived rivals.”

Incredibly, Robinson grew fond of him — “if every Muslim was like you, there wouldn’t be a problem” — although he later adopted a less charitable tone in his memoirs: “Mo was really a cartoon character, a Muppet Muslim.” Either way, it seems the decisive factor in Robinson leaving the EDL was a cheque for £8,000 paid for by the think tank Quilliam, which in return claimed credit for Robinson’s deradicalisation. But the good character stuff didn’t last long. Yet another prison sentence followed soon after When Tommy met Mo — the documentary about the meeting — and Tommy ended up in prison again, this time for mortgage fraud.

Some things in Enemy of the state is admittedly rather tame. In his criticism of the niqabfor example, he seems to have the qualities of a clubbable left-wing Frenchman: “at least the French had the courage to ban the face-covering veil.” But time and again his racial idea solved is rearing its ugly head: the “ethnic cleansing” of Luton by brown Muslims, who apparently have an innate penchant for “grooming gangs”. The facts, of course, tell a different story. As the Home Office concluded in 2020, “group-based child abusers are most likely to be white”. Across Britain, race tells us little. But neither does economic disadvantage, given the wide disparities across comparable councils. Sometimes statistics can be illuminating, and sometimes they can’t. This is a case of the latter.

The most crippling flaw in Robinson’s oeuvre is undoubtedly his ethnicization of class, as if the “white” in “white working class” means anything, as if he and Helena Bonham Carter might have more in common than he does with some fat-necked Muslim idiot he once shared a cell with. There are passages where he almost gets it, as when he wryly observes that the working class, regardless of color, is generally only valued when they dig trenches and die en masse “on the orders of the conceited and superior upper classes.” But then he veers off and whines about the white working class being “racially victimized” in Britain. Yet he is optimistic about the prospects of a white coalition of classes. He thinks his job is to “convince middle-class Englishmen and women that enough is enough.” But there are also some real blunders in his understanding of class indicators – “middle-class tweedies” are apparently “too busy catching up on the latest Sky Atlantic box set” – which raises questions about whether he is the right messenger for his audience.

“The most crippling flaw in Robinson’s oeuvre is undoubtedly his ethnicization of class.”

Still, it’s understandable why Robinson might be wary of using the c-word, or even “working class” for that purpose, without qualifying adjectives. This is because he has separated himself from it economically. Shortly after Enemy landed a lucrative job with the Canadian website Rebel Media. Practically a sinecure, he was paid £8,000 a month for his shrewd ability to materialise, mirage-like, camera in hand, at just the right moment when Islamists were attacking Britain. Yet he barely lasted a year in the job, raking in far larger sums through donations to justify having a boss. These days he’s toying with the idea of ​​taking out Spanish residency to evade an HMRC investigation; along with two pals – his ex-wife Jenna Vowles and Man Friday Adam Geary – Robinson owes the state around £800,000 in unpaid taxes.

It was perhaps only natural, in the timeless tradition of the gentleman amateur, that the newly gifted man should pursue an academic calling with independent means. So Robinson donned his skullcap and set to work on his second opuscule. A departure from his autobiographical obsessions, The Quran of MuhammadCo-written in 2017 by Peter McLoughlin, an obsessed grooming gang, and luridly subtitled “Why Muslims Kill for Islam,” is a work of Koranic exegesis. But it is not a book for Muslims, as we are told at the outset: “If you are a Muslim, put this book down. We do not want you to become a murderer, for this book will lead you to a deeper understanding of the doctrines and history of Islam.”

Touted as a corrective to the mindset of the ‘educated’ elite, The Quran of Muhammad tells us that there are peaceful Muslims, that is for sure, but they are completely wrong. They have misunderstood their faith. The rest of the book is occupied with rearranging chapters of the Koran. The game here is that old parlor game of the Islamic clerical classes: naskhor the doctrine of abrogation, which allows for the abrogation of verses from the Qur’an that are contradicted by later passages in order to smooth over inconsistencies. By rearranging the text like a spiritual DJ, Robinson is able to insert all the peaceful passages into the book quite early and thus “abrogate” them in favor of the later, violent passages. There you have it: a most contemptible, violent faith. It’s desperate, childish stuff.

The exegetical turn proved short-lived. Within weeks, Robinson was back at his laptop, advising terrorist Darren Osborne, who went on to drive a van into a Muslim crowd in Finsbury Park, killing one person and wounding 11. “I don’t justify it,” Robinson later wrote on Twitter, adding with a touch of apophasis that “the mosque where tonight’s attack took place has a long history of creating terrorists.” Two years later, in 2019, our prisoner was again incarcerated for contempt of court, after which he sought asylum in the US on InfoWarsa website that sells conspiracy theories and nutritional supplements: “I’m begging Donald Trump, I’m begging the US government, to look into my case,” he said on the radio. Unfortunately for him, this didn’t sit well with his ochre-coloured overlord. He had to remain content in his rural barn in Greater Manchester, complete with a hot tub in the garden and a TV above his bath.

A fool and his money are soon parted, however, and Robinson was ordered to pay £100,000, plus legal costs of £1.5 million, for defaming 15-year-old refugee Jamal Hijazi, who was attacked by far-right thugs and forced to relocate after Robinson falsely accused him of attacking “young English girls”. Even Robinson was forced to admit that he had cancelled the boy on faulty information: “I’ve been completely duped, what an embarrassing man.” He filed for bankruptcy shortly afterwards and has been involved in stalking a Indian journalist and her partner, for whom he was given a five-year stalking protection order, and calling a taxi driver in Bologna names: “little paki driving a car… I’m going to hit you on the head, kick you in the face, because I’m the king of the entire Islamic race (Like this).”

Like a dog returning to its vomit, Robinson returned to the Hijazi affair in his third book. Silence imposeda nasty reprisal of who said what to whom about whom. Telegraphically formulated, a summary might read: “I was right. The courts were wrong.”

Despite all his energetic antics and massive platform – News evening, Good morning Great Britainthe Today programme, Oxford Union, BBC, a Channel 4 documentary, all delivered by a guilt-ridden, right-thinking commentator in search of down-to-earth authenticity — it’s heartening to note that only a minuscule minority of souls have fallen for Tommy Robinson’s scam. In 2019, he polled just 2.2% of the vote when he stood for the European Parliament. When Gerard Batten roped him into Ukip’s Brezhnevite bureaucracy as a “grooming gang advisor”, Farage and seven other MEPs promptly resigned, fearing reputational damage. These are, after all, quite different traditions: Ukip’s origins lie in a fairly conventional post-war Euroscepticism, while Robinson’s lie in the interwar fascism of Oswald Mosley’s ilk, which is now considered beyond the pale.

Robinson, in short, is an anachronism. There is no existential battle between white and coloured Britain. What we have on our hands instead is an existential battle between white and Muslim fundamentalists, both sides as thick as mincemeat, and, in a way, two sides of the same coin. It is no coincidence then that Robinson has recently praised Muslim conservatives for being “strong in principle” and has joined them in opposing the teaching of tolerance for sexual minorities in schools. “Homosexuality is a horrible, horrible thing,” one Muslim conservative told the press; “it is not acceptable in Islam.” Robinson’s response: “I stand with Muslim parents.” A plague on both houses.