What Tommy Robinson's visit to Israel tell us about the UK's far right

Perhaps it was a meeting of minds. The Times of Israel headline announced that “UK far-right activist Tommy Robinson [is] in Israel after invite from Likud minister”.

Tommy Robinson is a phoney name for someone well known in Britain as a criminal. His real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. After convictions for violence, financial and immigration frauds, cocaine possession and public order offences, Robinson is also Britain’s most famous far-right activist.

He organised the “Unite the Kingdom” rally in central London last month. The rally involved a lot of flag waving and shouting at police during a mass protest against migration. Police say 37 of their officers were injured by some of the supposed “patriots” in what they described as “wholly unacceptable” violence at the rally.

Official estimates say between 110,000 and 150,000 people attended the march. Those numbers confirm that anxiety about migration and public order is a significant part of British politics right now. But “Robinson” is not content with making up his own name. He makes up his own numbers, too, claiming three million people attended the rally. This is delusional.

Nevertheless, despite, or perhaps because of, his criminal record, Robinson now claims financial backing for his legal fees from Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men. Supporters say he is “grateful to Elon Musk and his team at X for agreeing to provide support to Tommy Robinson for two specific legal cases”. Financial support from Mr Musk for lawyers’ bills to benefit a convicted criminal is perhaps less surprising than Robinson’s invitation to Israel, extended to him by Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli of the Likud party.

Robinson, of course, was delighted. It was a self-promotional propaganda opportunity at which he excels. He visited the Gaza border and said he wanted to “show solidarity with the Jewish people and the Israeli people”, especially because the British government had announced support for a future Palestinian state that Robinson called a “terrorist state”.

He described Israel very differently – as “an ally … a partner … a beacon of freedom and democracy, of rights, of all that we as British people hold dear, and all the places surrounding this are human rights violations [sic] terror states and jihad states”. Presumably Robinson believes Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and perhaps the Middle East more broadly are “terror” and “jihad states”.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the British Jewish Leadership Council are appalled by the invitation extended to Robinson by a member of the Israeli government.

British Jewish leaders are familiar with Robinson’s criminal record and said that he is a “thug who represents the very worst of Britain” and that “Minister Chikli has proven himself to be a Diaspora Minister in name only. In our darkest hour he has ignored the views of the vast majority of British Jews who utterly and consistently reject Robinson and everything he stands for”.

The anti-racist group Hope Not Hate describes Robinson as “far right, Islamophobic and an extremist”. You can judge from his own words when he says: “I’d personally send every adult male Muslim that has come into the EU in the past 12 months back tomorrow if I could. Fake refugees.” Or his comment that “Islam is fascist and it’s violent and we’ve had enough”.

Robinson’s visit to Israel, therefore, tells us nothing new about his character. What it does tell us is that sections of Israel’s Likud party are happy to roll out the red carpet for a convicted thug, and that British Jewish leaders are rightly concerned, especially after the recent horrific Yom Kippur attack on a Manchester synagogue in which two members of the congregation were killed.

All this is particularly potent right now as the UK government, police and football authorities are immersed in a row over whether Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv football club supporters should be allowed to travel to their November Europa League fixture in Birmingham with Aston Villa. Serious safety concerns were raised by Birmingham City Council and an independent Birmingham MP Ayoub Khan. Robinson’s social media account recently posted pictures of him in a Maccabi shirt suggesting he will turn up at Villa Park on November 6. Maccabi Tel Aviv has since said they will not accept tickets for the Aston Villa match.

Concern about a football match simply shows that these are nervous times for various communities in the complex ethnic, religious and political patchwork of the modern UK.

In a recent podcast I talked with Aaron Edwards, a British academic who specialises in the history of extremist far-right groups demonising minorities in the UK. He pointed out that the far right in the 1930s were anti-Semitic, including the “Blackshirts” of Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Mosley was eventually disgraced.

By the 1960s, Dr Edwards noted, far-right groups switched their similar anger towards migrants from the Caribbean, Africa, India and Pakistan. Again, their intolerance was exposed and countered. Now in the 2020s, the anger and racism of the far-right opportunists is towards Islam.

The British government and most citizens are appalled by the intolerance of people like Tommy Two-Names. But what’s striking is that Robinson himself is not merely tolerated but celebrated by a minister in the government of Israel.

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