The latest video from Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, reveals clearly that his latest national demonstration, called for October 26th, has nothing to do with ‘Uniting the Nation’, as is claims, nor anything to do with free speech. It’s all about trying to keep Yaxley-Lennon out of jail.
It’s a short but hysterical performance – and by hysterical we don’t mean funny, we mean he’s laughing hysterically throughout it, obviously having only just been ‘fuelled’ for the occasion.
And the bottom line is it’s a short, thinly-veiled threat of what might happen if the courts dare to jail him for contempt so soon after he will have wound up his followers at a mass rally in London.
This is it in full:
“Keir – you thought you’d stopped it.
“You thought you’d intimidated the British public into silence.
“We ain’t even started yet, mate.
“October 26th – you imprison me two days later, you’re going to galvanise our movement like never before!
“Only just started, bro…”
October 28th is the date set for the next hearing when he is due to answer a contempt of court charge, and highly likely to receive a substantial prison sentence. After he lost a 2021 libel action against a Syrian boy whom he accused of attacking girls at school, he was ordered not to repeat the allegation. But he did so on numerous occasions and was duly charged with contempt in June.
Then, at the 27 July rally he organised in London, he showed a documentary he had made where the allegations were repeated. This led to another contempt order being issued against him.
Just as in July, the October rally is scheduled to take place on a weekend immediately before his court hearing on the Monday morning. He missed the last hearing, of course, by skipping abroad the day before – on the way picking up another criminal charge, this time under the Terrorism Act, for refusing to cooperate with a search at the Eurotunnel terminal in Kent as he tried to flee. He left by Eurostar later the same day and was later tracked down sunning himself in a luxury resort in Cyprus. He then fled to Greece.
It’s curious – or perhaps not – that the timing of these rallies is always so close to his court appearances. And today’s video makes it explicitly clear that his intention is to use the next one to put pressure on the government to see he does not go to prison.
However, he may not have to wait that long to find out his fate. An arrest warrant will be activated in early October for his failure to attend court in July, if he hasn’t promised by then to attend court on 28th October. If he doesn’t give that assurance (which, given he did a runner in July would be worthless anyway), he may simply be picked up and dumped in a cell as soon as he arrives back in the country, to be taken to court in a prison van on the Monday morning.
Interestingly, in his interview last Sunday before scuttling off to the States, the Islamophobe preacher Calvin Robinson revealed that the original date which others wanted was 12 October, but that had not proved possible. Seems like Yaxley-Lennon’s need for it to be as close as possible to his trial date trumped other considerations.
He’s calling it “the most important date in recent times”.
And it probably is, if you’re Stephen Yaxley-Lennon trying to stay out of jail.
