Published by The i Paper (15th September, 2025)
Last Tuesday morning, a 20-year-old Sikh woman was dragged into bushes, beaten and raped beside a busy road in broad daylight by two men. One of the attackers, a burly man, had a shaved head and wore gloves. Both were white. This barbarity took place in Oldbury, close to Birmingham, where I attended the Reform UK party conference the previous weekend. As the pair of brutes assaulted this unfortunate young woman, one reportedly said: “You don’t belong in this country – get out.”
This horrifying incident should have become a huge news story, sparking national outrage and widespread political condemnation over such savagery. Although full details remain hazy, police are treating the shocking incident as a racially motivated sexual assault and promising extra patrols to calm community concerns in the area where I began my journalism career. This fuels the fears felt by many members of ethnic minorities about rising racial tensions amid a dramatic far-right resurgence, their alarm intensified as toxic bigotry and divisive ethno-nationalist rhetoric seeps into mainstream political debate.
Four days after that alleged racist attack, Britain’s most prominent far-right agitator led a massive protest in London. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who likes to be known as Tommy Robinson, bills himself as a patriot and free speech warrior, but is in reality a nasty hooligan with convictions for assault, use of a false passport, contempt of court, mortgage fraud, stalking a journalist, and spreading lies about a refugee schoolboy. He has also promoted Vladimir Putin’s propaganda – even visiting Moscow in 2020 to hang out with sanctioned Kremlin allies and urge co-operation “to preserve our Christian values, culture and identity”.
Yet this creep, who panders to a Russian dictatorship dedicated to the destruction of democracy in Europe, attracted perhaps 150,000 supporters to a London protest on Saturday. It was ludicrously billed a “festival of free speech” and falsely claimed as the biggest protest in British history; it was, however, certainly the largest nationalist event on our streets for decades.
When not drinking, snorting cocaine or urinating on historic buildings, many of his flag-waving “patriots” – some with faces painted in the red and white cross of St George – violently fought police. Others clutched images of slain American conservative Charlie Kirk – yet videos showed one attendee calling for Sir Keir Starmer to be killed and there were reports of chants of “Heil Hitler,” despite Robinson’s plea for his fans to be on best behaviour.
Obviously not all those attending the march were racists and thugs – but look at the unsavoury speakers joining Robinson after the anti-Islam provocateur had claimed Britain is “being raped” amid “an orchestrated, organised invasion and replacement of European citizens”. This risible “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory was echoed by far-right activists from Belgium, France and the Netherlands, one insisting that “Islam is our enemy”. A Christian extremist called for banning all “mosques, temples and shrines”. Other speakers included former reality television personalities Katie Hopkins, who has called migrants “cockroaches”, and Ant Middleton, an SAS veteran who thinks even third generations of migrant families should be barred from top political positions.
There was also the tech titan Elon Musk, who has used his immense wealth – and purchase of an influential social media site – to fan such flames of hate and provide an unfettered platform for conspiracy theories. Interviewed onscreen by Robinson, this loathsome billionaire spewed out poisonous bile about the left importing voters, demanded the ousting of our government, warned that Britons might be raped and murdered as their country was destroyed, and told the crowd: “You either fight back or you die.” It was incendiary rhetoric that clearly thrilled his smirking interviewer. “We’ve inspired the nation,” boasted Robinson.
It is grim to see these far-right forces on the march in Britain, as in other Western democracies, especially given our comparative success at handling immigration and absorbing cultural change. Tragically, there is a grain of truth to Robinson’s claim of changing our country. In recent months, we have seen how the far right exploited concerns about levels of migration – which are, in reality, now falling fast – to influence and pollute public discourse.
Some of its positions and stunts have been adopted by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – and the party’s poll surge has terrified its mainstream rivals and much of the media into cowed capitulation with its stance.
Farage – who resigned from Ukip over its embrace of Robinson and development of an “anti-Muslim fixation” – now has a policy chief demanding a ban on the burqa, MPs calling Britain “a fundamentally Christian country”, and has shifted position in a year to demand mass deportations. The chairman of Reform UK said Robinson’s march showed “the silent majority”.
At the party’s conference, members freely told me they were fans of the far-right activist. I heard a fringe speaker talk about tackling the “insurrectionary religion” of Islam. And the party links crime to migration while focusing hard on Muslim grooming gangs, echoing themes heard last century in bigoted hostility to Jewish refugees and Roman Catholic migrants.
When Enoch Powell claimed six decades ago that immigration would bring “rivers of blood”, the Tory leadership of the day turned on him, backed by Labour. Contrast that with today, when we see the Conservative Party leader try to outflank Farage over deportations of women and children while her leadership rival Robert Jenrick jumps on a stunt over street flags initiated by the far right.
Meanwhile, a panicked Labour Government, flailing to look tougher on illegal migration, says Robinson is tapping into disquiet and that the march was a “klaxon call” to redouble their efforts to tackle public concerns on issues such as migration.
It is, however, also a klaxon call to Britain’s political leaders to defend our great multicultural country and all of its citizens – whatever their colour, gender, race or religion – from an insurgent far-right rabble, which is being aided by unshackled social media, irresponsible technology billionaires, and enemy states intent on destroying democracy.
Ugly rhetoric leads to ugly events. So silence is no longer an option for true patriots who love the modern reality of their country in this struggle for the soul of our nation.