British anti-immigration activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known by the pseudonym Tommy Robinson, leaves Westminster Magistrates' Court in London on October 13, 2025, where he stood trial for violating anti-terrorism laws. CHRIS J. RATCLIFFE/REUTERS
Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, faced the courts once again on Monday, October 13, and Tuesday, October 14. The United Kingdom's most prominent far-right activist was summoned to Westminster Magistrates' Court, in west London, for refusing to provide police with his phone's PIN code during a stop in July, in breach of anti-terrorism legislation. He had been preparing to drive through the Channel Tunnel in a silver Bentley with a bag containing £13,000 (€14,941) in cash, heading to the Spanish seaside resort of Benidorm.
It was unlikely that, following the proceedings, this serial offender – convicted of assault, contempt of court and mortgage fraud, and no stranger to prison – would be sent back behind bars. Still, this fresh legal episode gave him another chance to play the victim, a role he relishes. The state was "putting [him] on trial" on "trumped-up charges," he insisted on X.
Yaxley-Lennon is a chameleon. His career began on the streets of Luton, his hometown in Bedfordshire, where he was a member of the MIGs, the local hooligan gang. He became an anti-Islam activist as the leader of the English Defence League (EDL), then an anti-vaccine "citizen journalist" during the Covid-19 pandemic, and is now a pro-Israel advocate and defender of Christian values. Yet some traits have remained constant in this 42-year-old with a closely cropped haircut and boxer's nose: a simmering anger, violence and a tendency to cast himself as a victim of the authorities and of the mainstream media. The titles of his works speak for themselves. His first book is called Enemy of the State (2015), and one of his documentaries (banned for defaming a young Syrian refugee) is titled Silenced (2024).
