I met Tommy Robinson once. It was 10 years ago exactly, during one of his many failed attempts to mainstream Islamophobia in British politics with a new “movement” called Pegida UK – a copycat of Germany’s far-right Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.
There was little memorable about this “launch”, which as a social affairs editor for Sky News I was sent to cover, only to discover a pitiful gathering of a few blokes at a pub near Luton. The thing that does stand out in my memory is what Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said to me. “It’s the Muslims that are a problem,” he said. “But you’re all right. You speak English. You’re like us.”
