Crowds near Trafalgar Square in London at the Unite the Kingdom march. Photograph: Maja Smiejkowska/PA
Turnout down at second ‘unite the kingdom’ march featuring Islamophobic and ethnonationalist hate speech and flyers
The far-right activist Tommy Robinson told tens of thousands of supporters to prepare for the “battle of Britain” during a rally in London on Saturday.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, drew tens of thousands of supporters on to the streets of central London for the second year running in an event where Islamophobic and ethnonationalist hate speech and flyers were distributed to the crowds.
Organisers claimed that millions had attended his “unite the kingdom” march, but police estimated the number of demonstrators to be far lower, at about 60,000. Last September’s march was attended by 150,000 people.
Crowds gathered in Parliament Square for the demonstration. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian
Robinson, who gained prominence as the founder of the anti-Islam English Defence League, told crowds gathered in Parliament Square that the rally was “a turning point for Britain”.
He encouraged his supporters to move beyond street protest and “fighting” and become involved in local politics before the next general election.
A protester faces off with Met riot police during a previous ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London in September. Photograph: James Willoughby/Sopa Images/Shutterstock
Celebrities including Annie Lennox and Miriam Margolyes sign letter to force after pro-Palestine march route rejected
Annie Lennox and Miriam Margolyes are among artists who have accused the Metropolitan police of giving preferential treatment to a far-right demonstration led by Tommy Robinson over a pro-Palestine protest in London on the same day.
The pro-Palestine movement has had its preferred route through central London for its annual commemoration of Nakba – the mass expulsion of Palestinians – rejected by the Met, while the “Unite the Kingdom” demonstration will take place on the same date in Kingsway, the Strand, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall and Parliament Square. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, posted on X: “London is ours on May 16th.”
An open letter saying that the Met “must not favour the far right over Palestine” has also been signed by the actors Samuel West and Khalid Abdalla, the musicians Billy Bragg and Nadine Shah, as well as MPs, academics, lawyers, trade union and civil society leaders. The Met said the decision was based on the relative scale of the demonstrations.
Billy Howle, who starred in the TV shows The Perfect Couple and The Serpent and also signed the letter, said: “The shocking decision of the police to exclusively favour a far-right demonstration and block this important annual commemoration from the political heart of London will send shivers down the spines of every person of good conscience. It must be overturned.”
The letter says that the pro-Palestine movement informed the force on 18 December of its intention to march on the nearest Saturday to Nakba Day, in keeping with a tradition dating back more than a decade, but that the Met has “instead given over the political centre of London to a hate march called by racist thug ‘Tommy Robinson’”. It calls on the force to “immediately reverse this shameful decision”.
Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.Climate science denier Nigel Farage explains that it’s simple to blame asylum-seekers or Muslims for everything.Nigel Farage blames the Muzzies.
Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (left) and (right) Robert Jenrick
The Morning Star sorts the good eggs from the rotten scoundrels of the year just gone
Heroes
The Birmingham Bin Strikers
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Their struggle matters to us all: the largest local authority in the country seeks to tackle its financial problems by attacking the pay and conditions of its workforce, and if it gets away with it other councils will follow suit.
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Francesca Albanese
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Sanctioned by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in revenge for her UN report From an Economy of Occupation to an Economy of Genocide, her bank accounts have been frozen, and this UN special rapporteur is blacklisted and barred from the international banking system like a terrorist, forcing her to manage all transactions in cash.
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The Palestine solidarity movement
So many people deserve special mentions, but the entire movement must be honoured: the heroic hunger strikers putting their lives on the line for justice; the thousands risking 14-year prison terms to expose the absurdity of the government’s ban on Palestine Action by sitting down peacefully in public; the leading peace activists arrested and charged for organising mass demonstrations, including Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal and Stop the War Coalition vice-chair Chris Nineham; the millions who have marched or fundraised or spread the word about a genocide, who forced Trump to tell Netanyahu in October that he cannot “fight the world” and must concede a ceasefire.
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The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
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Under its new leader Sophie Bolt, CND has stepped up to the challenge across 2025, holding a tour bringing the arguments against rearmament to military bases across Britain and a fortnight’s peace camp in protest at Britain’s return to being Washington’s Air Strip One.
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Villains
“Tommy Robinson”
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has disfigured the British political scene for years but 2025 has seen ominous new developments, from his sponsorship by the world’s richest man — far-right megalomaniac Elon Musk — to the largest far-right demonstration in British history that brought well over 100,000 onto the streets of London in September.
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Sarah Pochin and Robert Jenrick
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These two deserve public shaming for pushing the boundaries of explicit racism in public life: Pochin by complaining about the number of black people on telly and Jenrick with his no-white-faces-in-Handsworth drivel. Pure poison from two politicians we need to see the back of as soon as possible.
David Lammy
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Lammy, because the so-called Justice Secretary is presiding over horrendous abuses of justice — refusing to meet lawyers for the Palestine Action hunger strikers, who are being held for months and years behind bars without trial, and now planning the withdrawal of the right to jury trials just as the police are getting into gear with mass arrests of obviously innocent people.
Donald Trump
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The White House declares active support for far-right movements across the world (particularly in Europe), expresses open contempt for international law, blows up boats, killing their crews, in a murderous rampage across the Caribbean while seizing Venezuelan tankers in acts of naked piracy. And all while moving closer to war.
In the Middle East, Trump breaks new ground by publicly endorsing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and has already joined a direct Israeli attack on Iran — just days ago he mooted another.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon arrives at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, London, November 4, 2025
ANTI-RACISTS, many of them Christians, will challenge far-right agitator “Tommy Robinson” over his attempt to identify Christianity with his message of hatred this weekend.
Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) hosting a carol service is a surreal contrast to his normal routine of bigoted rants and spontaneous punch-ups.
He supposedly found God while in prison for contempt of court for repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee, though he hasn’t shown much contrition for his violation of the Ninth Commandment since. Indeed this is hardly a Damascene conversion given Robinson’s priorities (railing against immigrants and Muslims) seem exactly the same as before.
The recent emergence of Christian nationalism in Britain may have less to do with Robinson’s spiritual journey than with the influence of Donald Trump’s United States over the global far right.
Robinson is always acutely alert to where the money is and the US Christian right is awash with it. We also know, from the White House’s new national security strategy, that it hopes to reshape Europe in its own image.
It declares Europe at risk of “civilisational erasure” from immigration, commits itself to “help Europe correct its current trajectory” and identifies the “the growing influence of patriotic European parties” as the means to do so.
This is a potentially huge boost to the far right in countries like Britain. But it can be turned into a weakness.
A boost, because resources matter.
Robinson has already had legal fees paid by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who addressed the huge far-right demonstration held in London in September.
Their movement will have access to enormous funds, enabling effective propaganda operations and paid organisers.
It’s backed by the most powerful country on Earth — something we saw hints of in the succession of far-right figures hosted by US Vice-President JD Vance on a so-called holiday in England last summer, under the very noses of the supposedly allied British government he was working to undermine.
A factor which again benefits the far right: the liberal Establishment cannot conceive of a breach with Washington, and continues to lick the boots that are kicking it in the ribs. Most recently with a craven surrender to US demands over NHS drug pricing, which will raise the cost of medicine and cost British lives.
But that’s why the apparent asset of being a US asset can be turned against the insurgent right.
Robinson is not the only recipient of US largesse. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is also linked to the US “Maga” movement (he has received free services from the PR firm Capital HQ, linked to Steve Bannon, and is notorious for his frequent transatlantic trips).
Its economic priorities, in particular an acceleration of healthcare privatisation by proposing vouchers allowing access to private providers, align with the US aim — openly avowed in documents like Project 2025 — of turning the NHS into a cash cow for US companies.
We should expose the foreign money behind these so-called “patriotic” movements — and the similarity between the far right’s fixation with privatisation and deregulation with that of Tory and Labour governments. The flood of ex-Tories joining Reform do so because it is a Tory party: it is not “anti-Establishment” at all.
And our message in calling out Robinson’s perversion of the Christian spirit needs to look beyond him to the normalisation of cruelty in the political mainstream.
At Christmas Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, born in a stable, child refugee from King Herod, who urged his followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger and visit the prisoner.
That message damns a government that cuts benefits, hounds asylum-seekers and is ready to let eight brave hunger-strikers, some jailed for over a year already though none have faced trial, starve to death rather than address the injustice it has done them.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Users have found that Grokipedia lifts large chunks from Wikipedia, contains numerous factual errors and promotes Musk’s favoured rightwing talking points. Photograph: Algi Febri Sugita/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock
From publishing falsehoods to pushing far-right ideology, Grokipedia gives chatroom comments equal status to research
The eminent British historian Sir Richard Evans produced three expert witness reports for the libel trial involving the Holocaust denier David Irving, studied for a doctorate under the supervision of Theodore Zeldin, succeeded David Cannadine as Regius professor of history at Cambridge (a post endowed by Henry VIII) and supervised theses on Bismarck’s social policy.
That was some of what you could learn from Grokipedia, the AI-powered encyclopedia launched last week by the world’s richest person, Elon Musk. The problem was, as Prof Evans discovered when he logged on to check his own entry, all these facts were false.
It was part of a choppy start for humanity’s latest attempt to corral the sum of human knowledge or, as Musk put it, create a compendium of “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” – all revealed through the magic of his Grok artificial intelligence model.
When the multibillionaire switched on Grokipedia on Tuesday, he said it was “better than Wikipedia”, or “Wokepedia” as his supporters call it, reflecting a view that the dominant online encyclopedia often reflects leftwing talking points. One post on X caught the triumphant mood among Musk’s fans: “Elon just killed Wikipedia. Good riddance.”
But users found Grokipedia lifted large chunks from the website it intended to usurp, contained numerous factual errors and seemed to promote Musk’s favoured rightwing talking points. In between posts on X promoting his creation, Musk this week declared “civil war in Britain is inevitable”, called for the English “to ally with the hard men” such as the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, and said only the far-right AfD party could “save Germany”.
Musk was so enamoured of his AI-encyclopedia he said he planned to one day etch the “comprehensive collection of all knowledge” into a stable oxide and “place copies … in orbit, the moon and Mars to preserve it for the future”.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (left) and (right) Robert Jenrick
