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November 3, 2024 - 8:00am
The efforts of Reform UK’s leadership to professionalise their party have hit a major stumbling block: dissenters within who have expressed sympathy for Tommy Robinson and his supporters.
Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage is no stranger to condemning Robinson, who founded the English Defence League (EDL) in my hometown of Luton in response to the notorious anti-military “Butchers of Basra” demonstrations in 2009. Under leader Gerard Batten, Farage resigned from the UK Independence Party (UKIP), citing the leadership’s “obsession” with Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) and “fixation with the issue of Islam”.
In the aftermath of this summer’s riots, the 60-year-old emphasised that he had nothing to do with “the Tommy Robinsons and those who genuinely stir up hatred”. His deputy, Richard Tice, echoed such sentiments, saying that Reform UK should have no relationship with Robinson — who was recently jailed for 18 months after repeating libellous claims against a Syrian refugee — and those who attended last weekend’s rally in support of him.
However, a number of high-profile figures in Reform UK have expressed their disapproval over the leadership’s anti-Robinson stance — including former co-deputy leader of the party, Ben Habib, along with the party’s candidate for the 2024 London mayoral election, Howard Cox. The former, speaking to the founder of Unite UK and self-labelled “life-long patriot” Paul Thorpe, spoke of how Reform voters were at the pro-Robinson rally, issuing a rallying call for those against the “uniparty” to band together. The latter, featuring on former GB News presenter Dan Wootton’s “Outspoken” podcast, argued that Robinson should not be in prison.
The schism emerging at the heart of Reform UK will only widen if the party fails to develop a coherent political identity. In the last general election, it won four million votes and had five Members of Parliament, but it is not necessarily clear what the party stands for. While it generally presents itself to the Right of the Conservatives on issues such as immigration, integration, and identity, it is also in these areas of public policy where Reform UK — as a fledgling political party — risks facing its most severe internal disputes.
While Nigel Farage and Richard Tice may be more in favour of a British civic nationalism based on shared values and social contribution, that may not be enough for some of Reform UK’s rank-and-file members and those who voted for the party at the last general election. With one in five Britons supporting a primarily ethnic understanding of Britishness, does Reform UK’s leadership view this pool of voters as their core base — even if it includes those who believe Tommy Robinson is a political prisoner who, in their eyes, has been silenced by the establishment? Farage himself has been anything but enthusiastic over thrusting himself into debates on ethnic Englishness, but how central is it to the politics of England’s disenfranchised Reform voters who believe that Anglo-Saxon history, identity, and culture is being erased by public institutions?
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SubscribeIt is a curious convention of those writers who wish to signal their disapproval of Tommy Robinson to state that his “real name” is Yaxley-Lennon in a manner that they would never do to someone claiming a transgender identity or who is otherwise normally known by another name to the one they were registered at birth ( truly “assigned at birth” to use the cant phrase correctly). Your real name is surely the one you are generally known as not one originally on your birth certificate.
It is not as if the birth certificate name of Robinson gives any useful information about him in the way that the birth certificate of someone claiming a transgender identity probably does regarding their actual rather than purported sex.
It is puzzling. Perhaps the writer could respond.
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon sounds like a bit of a toff, and Tommy Robinson sounds like a proper Bri’ish lad, innnit.
I think it’s because the double-barreled name implicitly suggests he may be a bit of a posh poseur. My understanding is that he is from a fairly normal background and not a former scion of the landed aristocracy or such (who usually end up being Marxists anyway), but I’m open to correction.
If you said Kemi Badenoch’s real name you would be accused of racism
Rubbish.
Certainly anyone writing an article referring to Kemi Badenoch as: “Kemi Badenoch (real name Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch)” would be regarded as seeking to disparage her by suggesting she was seeking to hide her national or racial origin or pretend she was something other than what she is. You could be fairly certain the writer would not be writing a flattering encomium of Kemi without reading any further and you could also be be pretty certain the article would not be balanced and fair to her.
I like both Tommy Robinson and Kemi Badenoch but I’ve got to say that the use of their names is very different. Kemi is simply a shortened version of an otherwise unpronouncable Nigerian name, like Pep Guardiola. This is not the same as changing your name to some completely different. But as I said above, had I been Tommy Robinson 20 years ago and was about to embark on crusade to highlight Islamist abuses in England, I too would have changed my name in an attempt to save my family getting drawn into the danger I was opening myself up to.
Olukemi is not particularly unpronounceable but Kemi is a legitimate short version of her first name like calling a Thomas Tom and it is the name she is generally known by and so is her “real” name.
Tommy Robinson is well known by the name he has adopted and in this sense it is his “real” name even if in legal documents he is more likely to be referred to by the name on his birth certificate. The ritual reference to his birth certificate name serves merely to suggest there is something dodgy about him and signal the writer’s disdain and general disapproval of him to fellow “liberals”.
I think they insist on drawing attention to the fact that Tommy Robinson changed his name as it seems to suggest he is a shady character, a con man who will change his name each time his past catches up with him. However, I believe the real reason he changed his name was to try to protect his family from getting targetted by Muslim gangs in the early days before he was so well known. I would have done exactly the same.
He changed his name to that of a notorious Luton Town football hooligan. Absolutely legit to also give his real name.
That’s what he said.
Is anyone here actually going to address the main issue of the article, rather than Tommy Robinson’s name…?!
Nah. Yaxley-Lennon uses the name of an old Luton Town football hooligan to give himself more credibility and has not chnaged it by deed poll so legit to put his real name.
Zia Yusuf might be a muslim who ignores great swathes of the prophet’s revelations, but he doesn’t speak for the muslims who take their religion seriously and are citizens of the ummah first and of Britain a distant second. When the interests of each are opposed, it’s obvious who these pious muslim’s are going to rally behind. Reform has to accept that Tommy Robinson is going to enjoy the support of plenty of Reform supporters because he publicly recognises this simply and obvious reality.
I’ve worked with quite a lot of Pakistanis (born in Pakistan) both in Pakistan and in the UK. Most of them have no interest at all in Islam as a religion – they are just trying to do the best they can for themselves and their families. The irony is that it is the 2nd and 3rd generation Muslims who are the most extreme.
So, I don’t think it is going to take much persuading to get moderate and ambitious Muslims to support the Tories or even Reform. They aren’t going to do that though if they are faced with rhetoric which condemns all Muslims (you don’t have to search very far on social media to find that from EDL supporters).
Given the very fragile nature of the Labour coalition, any serious politician (of the Right) shouldn’t be alienating the moderate Muslims if they want to add them to their constituency.
I agree with the writer that this is something that Reform UK is going to have to tackle. The reluctance of its senior people to engage with it is understandable, but unhelpful. It is a nettle that they need to grasp. And it is not about Tommy Robinson. It is about the precedence of government and law over religion in our country.
The British are not a particularly religious lot. However this country is nominally a Christian one. It is not, nominally or otherwise, a Muslim one. That must be accepted and acknowledged by the party.
Reform UK might do well to make clear that it rejects the concept of an “Ummah” of any religion. In other words, in all matters, Reform UK must clearly state that it stands for nation state first, and religion second.
That may well be all that is required.
Isn’t this contradictory? Rejecting the “”Ummah” of any religion is the position of the secular 5th Republic in France. But in the UK it would mean disestablishing the Anglican church as the religion of state, so the opposite of what you suggest the Reform party should accept and acknowledge.
You are technically correct, but issue of Anglican Church being established is not relevant to any reall issues facing uk.
The biggest being mass immigration of Muslims who have no desire to integrate.
You can not have democracy without shared values.
You can not have properly functioning country without it.
Just look at Lebanon, Sudan and most of Africa.
So sooner or later someone will have to deal with Muslim issue.
Cost of doing it goes up every year in line with mass immigration.
The feeble and comic figure, the former bean counter who is the current Archbishop of Canterbury, will make disestablishment go down easily.
C of E worshippers are not required to place their religion over their national identity in any sense that I’m aware of. Followers of Islam seem to like to do this in large numbers.
They could be obliged to legally swear allegiance to their nationality ahead of their faith. Doesn’t mean much perhaps. But if they were immigrants, they could be deported if they transgressed, and if they were UK born they could be sanctioned, and in the case of Reform UK, thrown out.
I take your point, but enforcing such sanctions opens up a whole new can of worms, as the French have found out with endless arguments and legal challenges over the wearing of the hijab in schools.
I agree. And this is why I think we need a radical re-appraisal of our law in the UK.
So we can deport people that aren’t adhering to your weird version of a social contract? No thanks.
That’s a ridiculous proposition how on earth would you enforce it?
You are saying you would make people swear some kind of weird nationalist oath, and then deport them for ‘transgressions’?
Where does that begin and end.
What would your nationalist oath say?
I promise to uphold the values of freedom, democracy and freedom of religion?
That is what we have in this country.
Do you understand the contradictions in what you are saying. You cannot permit freedom of religion and then say you are going police whether people are putting nationalism over religion, or vice versa.
I’d love to know how you would establish this system of yours.
Perhaps your Idea of Britain is different to mine.
I agree with this, except in no real sense is the UK a Christian country today, albeit that of course Christianity has hugely influenced our values, even if often unconsciously. Of course if Muslims do become a more numerous and significant minority – as they are doing – this is likely to influence the values of the country, whether we like this or not. Things can change!
The schism in our society is that too many of the fundamentalist muslims are involved in politics and have become MP’s. Their agenda is blatent, to make UK a Caliphate. Their politicking is aggressive, bullying, and intimidating – rather like the SNP. And like the SNP they get away with it and it will only get worse every election time and at every council election.
Every article on Robinson contains insinuations of racism. Robinson is not a racist. His activism is directed entirely at Islamism, which is an ideology.
Robinson does not support ‘a primarily ethnic understanding of Britishness’. He acknowledges his mother’s Irish roots. He speaks positively of the multi-cultural community he grew up in. He left the EDL because it had been taken over in his view by people with ‘a primarily ethnic understanding of Britishness’.
Robinson’s issue is that Islam is incompatible with British democracy and pluralism, because – in his view – all Muslims will put supporting other Muslims ahead of Parliamentary democracy, the fight against terrorism and law and order. Clearly Robinson opposed Zia Yusuf’s stance that he can be both a Muslim and a British patriot.
If one in five Britons do see being British or not as being defined by ethnicity, it will be interesting to see how these people react to the election of a black woman who grew up in Nigeria as leader of the Conservative Party.
One of the notable reactions to Badenoch’s elevation to the Tory leadership has been the attempt by Reform to discredit her credentials: ostensibly her political credentials, but one wonders whether there’s something else behind their attacks.
It looks very much like they’re rattled by her.
All politicians seek to discredit the credentials of their opponents. Nothing new there.
There is. It’s the vehemence, which goes beyond mere politicial opposition.
I’m not suggesting racism- if that’s what’s being inferred – but concern she’ll pull the rug from under their momentum.
I don’t see Reform’s attack being based on racism.
Reform know that Badenoch will rattle Starmer in PMQs and around the country in a way that Bob Generic can’t. More fundamentally there is the very real issue of whether the UK should stay in the ECHR. Reform’s criticism of Badenoch as the ‘continuity candidate’ is based on her preference to stay in.
Reform know that the Tories are the ‘legacy’ party on the right. That means that people will vote for them ahead of Reform, if they are led by someone who attracts the public. The dream team for the Tories would be Jenrick providing the strategy, while Badenoch drives a wedge between male, pale and stale Starmer and his party. Whether this will be the case probably depends on the chemistry between Badenoch and Jenrick.
The elevation of Badenoch is surely unlikely to encourage ethnic British nationalists to vote Conservative, whether they presently do so or not. So that’s 20% of the electorate no longer accessible to the Tories. It would have been otherwise had Jenrick succeeded – he is, if anything, to the right of Farage on immigration.
I’m not sure. When Reform voters realise they are never going to get more than a handful of seats they might change their mind
Is it acceptable to reject racism but support “culturalism”? Culturalism is the idea that some cultures have values that are more appealing than others. I personally like western liberal values that promote democracy, individual rights, freedom of thought, expression and debate, impartial policing and justice, equality between the sexes, sexual identity and races, animal welfare, care for the environment, property rights, secularism, care for the aged, poor, disabled and ill, entrepreneurialism, our built and artistic heritage, the royal family, the British nation, the Church of England etc. And I oppose autocracy, misogyny, violence, repression, female genital mutilation, sexual abuse of women and children, religious education and so on. Reform should frame its response to Tommy Robinson around these ideas. He is entitled to an impartial and fair treatment by the criminal justice system, must be protected and is entitled to express his views as long as he eschews violence. This is a critical test of Reform’s integrity and values.
Careful, you will condemned as an ‘Occidental Supremacist’.
Gordon, of course we need more people to argue for western liberal values and argue for their superiority to other values. And we need to have a public debate about immigration and ideally a referendum so that the political system is empowered to act decisively. The public may be in favour of open borders or closed borders but given the scale of immigration (16 million since 1997) it is time they had a say.
… , of course we need more people to argue for western liberal values and argue for their superiority to other values…
Whilst I agree totally, I would caveat it with “Within Western ethnic countries.”
Are Japanese values inferior or Singaporean?
It would be much better, and simpler, to use the same principle as found in common law.
Define what is unacceptable in terms of societal, social, cultural and religious behaviour and practices and vigorously ban and suppress those practices based on the cultural and societal underlying basis of the respective country.
What exactly is a “real name”?
I dunno … maybe it’s designed to show an ‘identity crisis’ or just meant to irritate; I’m sure if the chairman of Reform was always called “Zia Yusuf (real name Muhammad Ziauddin Yusuf)” … he would be annoyed.
I think it is to distinguish him from ‘Tom Robinson’, (real name Thomas Giles Robinson), the singer who puts racial slurs like the n-word and the p-word into his songs.
His legal name as opposed to an assumed name to be used in politics, acting, writing, music etc.
But why isn’t everyone with an alias also known as ‘real name’, such as Michael Caine, Kemi Badenoch, Ringo Starr, Boy George, Elton John, Cliff Richard and so on? What’s the big deal about his real name in any case ?
But does anyone else of any significance use an assumed name in politics? The only ones I can think of are in The Monster Raving Loony Party, who don’t really count, and historically Herbert Frahm, who assumed the name Willy Brandt for security purposes when he was in the anti-Nazi resistance, and kept it during the post-war career which took him to the West German Chancellorship.
PS And Communists like Lenin and Stalin, of course, again for security purposes. But it’s nice to think of Mr Robinson having something in common with Stalin.
Only person who I can think of was Tony Benn, whose real name was Tony Wedgewood-Benn.
Anthony, surely?
Barak Obama, actual name Barry Sotero
Thank you for raising the issue. I am part of the Reform UK movement and support the Party’s policy positions on the major issues facing the UK. Recently I have become aware of the Tommy Robinson phenomenon and watched to his recent Lawfare and Silenced documentaries as well as his interviews with Jordan and Tammy Peterson. In no way do I consider TR either racist or anti-islam. He has raised challenging issues, including the problem of uncontrolled immigration, immigrants and ethnic minorities that don’t integrate, islamist ideology and anti-Western values being tolerated instead of discouraged, police and judicial cover-ups of criminal behaviour by such individuals. We need to talk about these problems not persecute and gaslight the journalists and whistle-blowers. It seems that one question to resolve is how patriotic muslim Britons rationalise their religion with our core values of democracy and free speech.
“But sensitive matters relating to Islam, integration, and national identity threaten to derail its growth as a credible and cohesive political outfit.” You mean the slaughter of young children and other innocents and the punishment who raise their voices in protest.
Much is made of the distinction between ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism and the associated distinction between core (oppressive) culture and peripheral (oppressed) cultures by Rakib and other cultural identity warriors but on a formal level these distinctions are largely erased by equality laws with these laws effectively allowing citizens to adopt whatever cultural identity they like.
As such, on an informal level, discussions about these distinctions are just talking points which serve the cathartic and political purpose of labelling people and groups as friends or foe in order to identify and formulate voting blocs.
Thus, the basis of the culture wars, as Mary Harrington has been recently discerning, is to identify and formulate “interest groups” which in the feudal days were known as “estates”.
Each of these “estates” have their own notion of what constitutes integration and national identity and so in this respect, ideas of integration and national identity will always be contested.
However what these discussions about estates, integration and national identity often serve to detract from is firstly how these different estates are treated by the State, secondly, how these estates treat each other and thirdly, what is the accumulative impact of these estates on national sustainability, resilience and sufficiency, especially in terms of population growth and the increasing dependence on foreign land, energy and materials.
https://www.wwf.org.uk/riskybusiness
In this respect, what we are actually talking about is population ecology.
https://www.britannica.com/science/population-ecology
However the tendency is lose sight of population ecology and the ramifications of competing estates on national sustainability, resilience and sufficiency and instead solely focus on estates as potential voting blocs.
It is therefore interesting that the recent patriot march in London was entitled “Uniting the Kingdom” which goes some way towards highlighting the need to pay more attention towards national sustainability, resilience and sufficiency.
In this respect, does the policy of equality and the informal institution of cultural voting blocs support national sustainability, resilience and sufficiency or does it hamper it. Indeed, does democracy and the informal institution of cultural voting blocs support or hamper national sustainability, resilience and sufficiency. And furthermore, does human rights frameworks and the informal institution of cultural voting blocs support or hamper national sustainability, resilience and sufficiency.
In my view, it is becoming increasingly contestable that they do, especially if voting blocs are forever competing and therefore lose sight of national sustainability, resilience and sufficiency due to self-interest. Similarly, if equality, democracy and human rights are driving unsustainable population growth, then how are they supporting national sustainability, resilience and sufficiency.
Thus, when Starmer decided to break The Contempt of Court Act 1981 with his contemptuous slurs of far rightism in the wake of the summer riots was he really thinking about national sustainability, resilience and sufficiency or was he thinking about his party aligned voting blocs. Of course we know the answer to that despite his “country before party” rhetoric.
So rather than meaningless talk about integration and national identity which keeps the focus on cultural voting blocs, why don’t we instead talk about national sustainability, resilience and sufficiency and how integration and national identity might serve that much higher purpose.
I think the obsessive reporting of Tommy Robinson’s birth name is dictated by guidelines issued by the NUJ. Every single journalist with aspirations of landing a gig in the heritage media abides by this. As ‘gotcha’ moments go it is rather lame.
Hmmmm.
Can’t you be anxious about Anglo-Saxon history and culture without actually, y’know, being an Anglo-Saxon? I would say that we all need to regard ourselves as inheritors of British history (including its English component, which in turn includes its Anglo-Saxon component) in order to have a coherent nation. But we aren’t all Anglo-Saxons.
I had thought that Ehsan was in favour of this sort of idea – that when you come here you adopt the identity (or at least encourage your children to adopt the identity) of being “from here”.
If that’s true, can’t you be anxious about this culture being erased not because of immigration per se but because our institutions don’t encourage this idea and because immigrants don’t adopt it. So there is space in that approach for reform voters (I’m not one) to be comfortable with demographic change and their culture.
TR has been treated as shabbily as anyone in recent history. He was right on organized sex gang’s, but somehow gets blamed for bringing it up. How about holding those who made lies about covid, immigration, Ukraine, and so much more accountable.
“Anglo-Saxons” is a misnomer and inappropriate in this context. According to DNA data most British natives today are a mixture of Anglo-Saxon (Germanic), Celt and Scandinavian (Viking, the Normans were Vikings) ancestry.
Using “Anglo-Saxons” when discussing ethninicity in the UK is not appropriate and it is giving the historic period and culture we call Anglo-Saxon, a bad name. Anyone would think it was a subtle, undermining attack on British history.
Celts, Norse, and Normans all ended up adopting the language and culture of the dominant ethnic group, the Anglo-Saxons, who were already referring to themselves as collectively Anglo-Saxons when King Alfred was alive. They even named a country after one of their own ethnic subgroups, it’s called England. The looney idea that you can’t refer to people as Anglo-Saxon has got more to do with the endlessly toxic racial paranoia of America being imported to the UK than common sense or history.
You are mistaken about the adoption of the language, do have a look at Beowulf in Old English (Anglo-Saxon),
https://www.mit.edu/~jrising/webres/beowulf.pdf
Many Old English words are certainly part of the English language; mother, father, sun, moon, tree, blossom, and, the, usually the simple ones, but so is French from the Normans; crown, fortune, giant, lawn, motive, size, reason. French was spoken by the nobility up until the 15th century, also in the law courts along with Latin. Lots of Latin in our language too.
Modern English is a blend of all these with a sprinkling of Greek and others.
I agree with you about the “toxic paranoia”.
After 1066 the “dominant ethnic group” was the Normans, remember the “harrowing of the North”, when William the Conquerer laid waste to northern England and wiped out the Anglo-Saxon rebels ?
Gradually over the ensueing centuries we became ‘the English’.
As an “ethnic group” the Anglo-Saxons are obsolete, though the Americans do still call the English Anglo-Saxons some of the time.
“English” from the Anglo-Saxon term “Englisc.” The Anglo-Saxons were the Saxons who spoke Englisc, hence Anglo-Saxons. Funny that’s the term that got used in the end, eh? It isn’t called Normanland, is it? Even if the political authority resided in their descendants for several centuries. The Normans gradually became English, but the English were already there, in the country they’d created, called England.
That is true, but there is nothing “funny” about it, the Anglo-Saxons left a fine legacy; many words we use today, the beginning of our legal system with Alfred the Great’s Domboc, their poetry and other writing, exquisite craftsmanship – jewellery, armour and ornaments, the history of their courage in battle and Christian devotion once they had converted, and their DNA which most of us have inherited to some extent.
I value the Anglo-Saxons as highly as you do, they are a fascinating and inspirational part of English history.
We need to start taxing religion in the UK.
All Reform need to do is recognise that some Muslim sects, and some individuals, reject the incitements to hatred and violence in Islamic texts, instead proselytising Islam by their good example. They are, of course, declared non-Muslims or apostates by the mainstream Sunni and Shia and persecuted. Iran executes thousands of the ‘wrong sorts’ of Muslims every year.
He is absolutely the correct person to at least Deputise in a British populist party. Sorry to say but I also view such a party as an Anglo-Celtic nationalist party and don’t see the point of their current appeals to ethnic diversity.
Actually, Tommy sparked an identity crisis for all of Britain. The crisis revealed that Britain has hollowed itself and doesn’t care for its own young enough to be bothered.
The leaders of Britain dare not offend the conquerors of Britain.
I find this a tricky one. As leaders of a party that is trying to grow its base, should they support someone on the fringes of acceptability and, as Tommy himself admits, is no angel, or do they try to distance their party from someone who divides opinion and has the ability to scare away the Normies and the -faint of heart. I find both Nigel Farage and Ben Habib eminently sensible and the fact that they disagree on this suggests that the solution is not cut-and-dried.
Islam is something that is never examined in any depth by the media because the people of the media are cowed by the threat of violence from the adherents. After Charlie Hebdo, who can blame them. Remember the attempt a few years back by Channel 4 to make a program examining the origins of the Koran? Never screened after threats were made.
The kind of Islam in Britain is extreme, because it is never challenged. All the radicals kicked out of the Middle East have set up here. Preach here. Tolerated here. There is an Islam problem in Britain. It will have to be faced down in the end, or we will all pay the the price (the jizya).
Reform will have to choose between upsetting a proportion of its core vote and retaining the possibility of attracting votes from elsewhere. Only the latter route provides an opportunity for meaningful electoral success.
No one needs an embarrassing supporter.
Who in Reform UK apart from Farage can accurately be described as having a high profile? Who among the general public could name all the members of the cabinet, never mind all the officers of Reform UK?
All the millions voting for Reform UK in the last General Election only succeeded in elevating one arm of the uniparty to office.
Tommy Robinson is a tireless advocate of free speech, and anyone who has listened to his broadcasts, and his debating at both Oxford and Cambridge, will see that he is a articulate speaker and thinker, and has many more fans and followers that the biased media will ever admit. Our main political parties are so frightened of accusations of ” Islamaphobia” that they themselves are essentially fuelling the already exponential growth in the opposition to the encroach of Islamism in Britain.