Tommy Robinson

Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon (né Yaxley; born 27 November 1982), better known as Tommy Robinson, is a British anti-Islam campaigner and one of the UK's most prominent far-right activists.

Robinson has been active in far-right politics for many years. He was a member of the British National Party (BNP), a British fascist political party, from 2004 to 2005. For a short time in 2012 he was joint vice-chairman of the British Freedom Party (BFP). He co-founded the English Defence League (EDL) in 2009 and led it until October 2013. In 2015 he became involved with the development of Pegida UK, a now-defunct British chapter of the German Pegida. From 2017 to 2018 he wrote and appeared in videos on the Canadian website Rebel News. In 2018 he also served as a political advisor to Gerard Batten, then the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

Robinson served four prison terms between 2005 and 2019. In 2013 he illegally entered the United States using a friend's passport. In 2018 he violated a court order by publishing a Facebook Live video of defendants entering court. Prior to sentencing, he appeared on the American far-right website InfoWars to appeal for political asylum in the US. In 2021 he was subjected to a five-year stalking prevention order for harassing the journalist Lizzie Dearden and her partner. In 2021 he was found to have libelled a 15-year-old refugee at a school in Huddersfield and was ordered to pay £100,000 plus legal costs. After breaching an injunction about repeating the libel, Robinson was sentenced to 18 months in prison for contempt of court in October 2024; the sentence length was later reduced after he said he would comply with the injunction in future. In June 2022 Robinson said that he spent £100,000 in gambling before declaring bankruptcy. He also said he owed an estimated £160,000 to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). The Times said that he owes in the region of £2,000,000 to his creditors, and is the subject of a HMRC investigation over unpaid taxes.