A trove of voice messages handed toSearchlight by a source inside the far-right offers a revealing insight into the mix of crude ambition and greed that drives Danny Tommo, the rabble-rousing anti-immigrant influencer and longstanding – if not particularly loyal – Tommy Robinson sidekick.
Listen to the Danny Tommo tapes at the end of this article
Tommo (real name Daniel Thomas), who was jailed for two years in 2016 after pleading guilty to the attempted kidnapping at knifepoint of a man in Portsmouth in a local drugs feud, played a key role during the race riots that followed the murder of three young girls in Southport in 2024, provocatively telling his social media followers: “Every city needs to go up.”
Ham-fisted stunt
Last year, he recast himself as a far-right vigilante against asylum seekers crossing the English Channel from France by boat. The ridiculously named ‘Operation Overlord’ saw Tommo and a squad of fantasists descend on Calais beaches in November to act out ham-fisted stop the boats stunts.
‘Operation Overlord’ saw Tommo join forces with Ryan Bridge. The pair were eventually banned by the French authorities after harassing charity workers and migrants in refugee camps around Dunkirk and Calais.
Bridge, who was once wanted in Spain for a multi-million-pound holiday sickness compensation scam, has in the last year emerged as the leader of a high-profile Birmingham-based mass flagging campaign called Raise the Colours.co.uk.
Masquerading as phony patriots, the flag fetishists set out to intimidate, designate territory, and target asylum seekers and people of colour.
Monetising hate
It is at this point that the Tommo voice notes chronicle begins.
In a slew of ingratiating messages to Bridge, it is apparent that Tommo, having watched the RtC and its flag-raising stunts break into the mainstream consciousness in the autumn of 2025, sees it as a vehicle to boost his ambitions to become a top far-right player and monetize the politics of hate.
“I was a pawn for a long time, mate. I feel I am now up to like a bishop, close to a king, not there yet. But I feel my worth is a lot more heightened than it used to be, and I am beginning to see things for what they are”, a deluded Tommo muses to Bridge.
I was a pawn for a long time, mate. I feel I am now up to like a bishop, close to a king, not there yet. But I feel my worth is a lot more heightened than it used to be, and I am beginning to see things for what they are…my loyalties lie with you
Danny Tommo to Ryan Bridge
Meanwhile, he pleads to be allowed to get a slice of the RtC action, though he lives in Havant in Hampshire, nowhere near the RtC’s Birmingham base.
“My loyalties lie with you”, simpers Tommo, in one message, “even though I bet behind-the-scenes you guys are questioning things. I get it. I am an outsider trying to come in. I want to be an insider. I love you very much, and I am looking forward to getting this done”.
Back-stabbing Tommy Robinson
Tommo is a crony and playmate of Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), the UK’s leading figure on the far right. Last year, the ex-jailbirds even holidayed together in Tenerife.
In the voice notes Searchlight obtained, Robinson has a cameo in which he messages Tommo to ask why he hasn’t made progress on an anti-immigrant documentary project they were cooking up.
Tommo replies, sounding like a schoolboy making excuses to the headmaster why he hadn’t done his homework.
“Yes, Yax, I listened to this in church, and I totally forgot to get back to you”, he dissembles meekly.
However, in a later voice note to Bridges, he can be heard plotting to betray Robinson and cut him out of his attempted tie-up with RtC.
Interesting encounter
The disloyal Tommo reveals it’s time to “move away from Tommy. At this point, I believe it is the right choice. That’s no disrespect to him, I love him to bits. But he is not right for this. That’s a big move”.
On May 16, Robinson is leading the Unite the Kingdom rally in London. Tommo is promoting it and is expected to attend. It should make for an interesting encounter between the leader and his restless, power-hungry underling.
‘I need money’
In public, Tommo’s lurid political rhetoric focuses on inciting English men to defend their women and girls from the asylum seekers and immigrants he casts as sexual predators. In private, his priority is to fill his pockets, and he wants a share of RtC’s success.
In a revealing voice note, his grift becomes clear. “Put aside what we are doing here, Overlord, RtC, the cause; I am the father to three fucking kids, and I have to have an income,” Tommo says.
In the call, he claims he needed money to pay his rent and bills: “All the donations are going to RtC’s bank account, and I’m stressing and worried about money. Fuck that, that’s not how it works.
“If we are a team, offer me a salary, offer me some money… Boom! RtC is looking after me. Boom! RtC is looking after my kids and my rent.”
Despite bragging on social media that he runs a highly successful roofing business, the voice notes paint a different, desperate picture.
“I’m a businessman, and I ain’t got a business at the moment… I’m happy to become RtC, but RtC aren’t offering me anything”, he moans.
‘I’m taking my steroids’
But Bridge appears unresponsive to his eager wannabe partner, and Tommo becomes increasingly frustrated. A desperate Tommo proposes a deal to buy into RTC.
“I’ve offered to give you a YouTube channel with nearly 130,000 subscribers and call it RtC. That’s my offer on the table, Danny Tommo becomes RtC”.
Tommo, the man is a great product; he tries to convince Bridge. “I’m back with a fucking bang. I am about to walk back into the gym, and I am smashing it. I am taking my ‘roids (steroids), and I am taking my proteins, and I am ready to go”.
Predictably, ‘Operation Overlord’ quickly floundered. Tommo and Bridge were banned by the French authorities after allegedly harassing charity workers and migrants in refugee camps around Dunkirk and Calais.
Soon, Bridge and Tommo had turned on one another and degenerated into open hostility when RtC put out a statement saying that Tommo was ‘stepping back’ from their anti-migrant activities in northern France.
‘Who’s got the minerals?’
Interestingly, the voice notes supplied to Searchlight feature a single substantial Bridge response to Tommo’s plethora of messages. It is the one in which he brutally stitches up his erstwhile ally, who shares a taste for tawdry race-baiting stunts to gain influence and money.
Threatening to reveal what Tommo has said, denigrating Tommy Robinson, Bridge issues a threat: “I’ll ruin you, mate. Don’t fucking test me. I’ll meet you anytime, any place. We’ll see who has got the minerals, mate”.
Sub-gangster rant
What follows is a sub-gangster stream of consciousness via repeated voice notes, fuelled with anger – and who knows what else; a manic Tommo doing his best impression of a snarling hardman who will have his revenge delivered in rambling word salads, punctuated by dramatic sniffs, and the sound of him chewing furiously.
“You’ve threatened me and my family, you think you are some Birmingham gangster. I feel so disrespected. I don’t give a shit if you put all of those voice notes out on the internet for everyone to see”, says Tommo.
‘I’m unhinged…’
Declaring himself to be a “madman”, “unhinged”, and “mentally unstable”, Tommo brags, “I run into to groups of Muslims, do you think I give it a fuck?”
He continued in another voice note: “Ha-ha-ha. fucking ruin me, this cunt thinks he’s going to ruin me, you know what you’ve wound me up more than the lefites…You think I’m worried about what you could do to me…ha-ha-ha…I’ve been to hell and back twice, and returned”.
Tommo’s crazed outpourings end seeking cover behind his relationship with Tommy Robinson. “You are just a power-hungry fucking sausage, who has just threatened one of the biggest assets you’ve ever had in this movement. You’ve just threatened Tommy Robinson’s right-hand man, for what?”
Terrorism-related activity
Since the souring of relations with RtC, Tommo has been desperately trying to launch his own far-right brand as the scourge of asylum seekers.
In April, in an attempt to boost his YouTube profile and marketability as a rage entrepreneur, he was roaming the port at Dover and panhandling for donations to buy a boat to confront the dinghies of asylum seekers crossing the Channel. He was subsequently banned from the ports of Dover, Folkestone and Ramsgate.
Inciting disorder
Last month he led an angry protest in Epsom, Surrey, after falsely accusing the police of deliberately covering up the ethnicity of suspects who had allegedly gang-raped a local woman. Police later confirmed they found no evidence of an offence having been committed.
People asked whether Tommo should be charged with inciting disorder after ranting about the fictional “four monsters who gang raped a woman,” and last week, the authorities finally decided his performative white nationalism had tried their patience for too long.
Detained at Heathrow
Tommo, 37, was detained at Heathrow on May 1 under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which can be used to determine if an individual is involved in “terrorism-related activity”. He was released the following day.
It followed his arrival in the UK from Belgium, where he had been trying to recreate his social media campaign to thwart migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.
According to reports, people-smuggling gangs have started to expand their operations to Belgium to evade an increasingly robust response from French police.
Listen to the Tommo tapes here:
