September 24, 2025
A bitterly divided democratic camp, a constitutional setup with few guardrails and a surging extreme right spell trouble ahead for Britain’s political institutions.
Anti-migrant demonstrators attend a Far Right Unity Rally on September 20, 2025 in Glasgow, Scotland.(Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images)
With something in the region of 150,000 people attending, the Unite the Kingdom march on the September 13, 2025, was probably the biggest street mobilisation of the extreme right in British history. It was the initiative of Tommy Robinson, one time founder of the English Defence League (EDL) and former member of the British National Party, who now casts himself as a “citizen journalist,” championing “free speech” and lamenting “open border mass Islamic immigration.” Robinson has built a movement around his supposed “martyr” status as an imprisoned criminal. His most recent prison time for contempt of court arose from his refusal to comply with a court order following his defeat in a trial for libelling a 15-year-old Syrian refugee.
After he left the EDL in 2013 claiming he was on a path to moderation, Robinson had looked like a spent force. But his career was resurrected with the backing of America’s far right super rich. Funding from US tech billionaire Robert Shillman and the media platform Rebel News would make Robinson a leading light in the so-called “counter jihad” movement in Europe and North America. But it was the support of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, that has transformed the reach of Britain’s far right street movements across 2025.
Musk addressed the rally in a 20-minute interview with Robinson, in which he openly called for a violent revolution. “Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die,” he told the crowd. Under Musk’s ownership, Robinson has been welcomed back to Twitter/X, and the platform has actively driven audiences to his and other extreme right accounts. The big US digital platforms have also shifted their content moderation policy under pressure of the White House, leading to the re-platforming of the far right. This supported a summer of street mobilisation, combining terrorising asylum seekers staying in temporary hotel accommodation and the more innocuous activity of covering towns with English and British flags. The mass march brought this activity together and gave a stark illustration of Britain’s growing problem with far right indeed extreme nationalism.
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Many journalists and anti-racist counter protestors remarked on the “ordinariness” of the marchers, going well beyond the usual cohort of hardened far-right figures. But despite drawing in such a sizeable audience there was little sign of dissent from the crowd to the hardline rhetoric coming from the top table.
Speakers repeatedly linked Islam and immigration to paedophilia and other touchstone far right conspiracies. Filip Dewinter, the Flemish nationalist, summed up this extreme mood when he said, “Islam is our real enemy.