I was in Tommy Robinson's inner circle... he HATES his own supporters (2024)

'Hot-headed' Tommy Robinson posts inflammatory messages 'on a whim' and knows he can 'summon an army' from his hundreds of thousands of followers, his former assistant claims.

The former English Defence League leader, 41, is 'phone obsessed' with his iPhone 'glued to his hand', Lucy Brown exclusively told MailOnline.

But his former camerawoman says the right-wing 'fame addicted' activist doesn't like hanging out with his 'army' of fans after protests, and instead hides away at a pub for a vodka and co*ke.

Robinsonhas this week been sunning himself on a lounger from the safety of his luxury bolthole hotel in Cyprus while sharing fake stories about Muslims knifing British men at riots in the wake of the Southport stabbing attack.

In one post on X he said that rioters in Southport were 'justified in their anger'.

The convicted criminal's supporters have taken to the streets in a campaign of mindless violence that has seen Shoezone, Greggs, and Lush stores smashed and burned with hotels being targeted where asylum seekers and migrants are being housed.

The violent rioters have been heard chanting Robinson's name as they launch bricks and petrol bombs at police officers and wheel large burning rubbish bins.

It's a playbook Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has used in the past in exploiting tragedies to pedal an anti-immigration narrative.

In 2017, he used the same line that 'we are at war with Islam' in the aftermath of both the Westminster Bridge and Manchester Arena terror attacks.

In an angry video this week he refuted any claims that he had 'stoked the flames' as he shared a montage of clips in which he urged his 'lads' to carry out 'peaceful protests'.

During the same 11 minute footage he also called for mass deportation and that hotels needed to be emptied of the 'barbarians who are raping, pillaging and murdering across our nation'.

Ms Brown started working as his camerawoman in 2017 while he was earning a reported £5,000 a month atright-wing vlog channel Rebel Media, before a row ended up in her being sacked a year later.

She told MailOnline Robinson knows he can 'summon an army' of 'at least a thousand people' for a protest through his Twitter account, but after a march he will slink away to a pub for a drink with his 'cousin or mate' as he wants to 'get as far away as possible' from his own fans.

While there he will refresh his phone 'a million times' to see the reaction and boast 'this is amazing', Ms Brown says.

'After marches, he tended to not want to be among people, he used to want to just get as far away frankly from his own fans as possible,' she says.

'He'd want to hop in a car or go and hide. I think it is because these characters going on stage and everything is like being a rock star. I think that's why people like Laurence Fox are taken with it becauseyou get treated like it.

'In fact, it might be even better because if you're famous for being the man that's "saving Britain", people love that. And people want to come and hang out with you, and they want to talk to you about it.

'And they develop a parasocial relationship with you. They want to tell you what you should do.

'We used to have people all the time messaging us like, "here's what you should do. And here's what I think's happening", and it all just gets to the point where... I can kind of sympathise that maybe he's just like, "Oh, f*** this. I just want to go to the pub".'

Ms Brown says 'hot-headed' Robinson will post tweets 'on a whim' having not consulted with his team of 'mini-me's', and claimed they are often not fact-checked.

'I know he's not got anyone that he's asking about it [the tweets], that is, in fact, one of the main reasons why, when we all worked together as a team, that things started to go south for us.

'He would just go post stuff at three in the morning, sometimes just getting in arguments with random Twitter users.

'I remember that was why he got his Twitter accountbanned in 2018 because he got in an argument with some account with two followers, said something about Islam, and that was it.

'We were getting angry at him like, "why did you do that? That was so stupid", and he was like, "well, it's my account I can do what I want".

'So he's very "I'll just do it. It's my account I don't care".'

Robinson lived in an echo chamber where his trio of right hand henchmen - Richard Inman, Danny Tommo (real name Daniel Thomas) and Danny Roscoe - would be 'egging him on', Ms Brown claimed.

And she said he would be blasé when faced with any backlash from within his own circle.

'He normally would post something without consulting anyone, and then, if people got angry at him, it would be in a group chat, and he'd probably just brush it off, or he'd just delete it.'

After the Westminster Bridge terror attack in 2017, Robinson rushed to the Houses of Parliament where he was filmed by his camera crew launching into a tirade about Islamic extremism.

He was widely condemned and accused of inflaming the situation, but off camera Robinson was telling his team how his Twitter account had been 'popping off' with the clip causing his following to surge by hundreds of thousands.

Ms Brown, who wasn't working for him at the time, recalled a conversation she had with him about it.

'He wasn't like super gloating about it because people had died,' she says. 'But he was like "I hate to say this, but my Twitter account's been popping off. This is amazing. I've got like this many followers overnight".

'So there was definitely a little bit of like phone addiction going on there where he was just scrolling and saying "look at this! Look at this!".'

When the Manchester Arena terror attack happened two months later, Robinson hastily announced to his team without any consultation that he was going to be organising a protest.

'I think, on that occasion, and what he tended to do after that was, he would just announce it and be like we're doing it next week, and then us, his team, would be going "what?",' the fashion photographer says.

'There'll be no like sort of discussion again. It all sort of comes from him.

'It would normally be very, very quick. I mean he definitely knows that in his little hand, in his iPhone is up to 300,000 people. Now, it's more than 800,000 but he knows that if he goes in that box and he says to these people "let's do this" he knows that there's going to bethousands at the very least turning up to where he said to turn up.

'He definitely knows that he can summon an army like that.'

She added: 'It's the rush of organising it last minute, having it all happen, seeing it all kick off sometimes there'll be opposing factions, left wing people, or police, and it's a little bit pantomime. You've got people shouting at each other with different flags and all that kind of stuff.'

Ms Brown doesn't believe Robinson organises protests with the intention of them turning violent, instead arguing it's a 'blindspot' of his.

'If he's being persecuted for doing something objectively stupid, and for putting people in danger, he sees that as "the State are coming after me for telling the truth and they're going to lock me up".

'But "it's okay, because I'm going to be a hero". I think that's how he frames it himself.'

Robinson was banned from Twitter in 2018 when he fell foul of the platform's rules on 'hateful conduct'.

But in November 2023 its billionaire new owner Elon Musk reinstated the far-right agitato's account.

Musk himself has also drawn criticism having launched a bizarre war of words with the British government as the riots continued to grip Britain.

'Civil war is inevitable' he wrote in response to images of rioting in Liverpool. He then responded to a video posted by the PM stressing attacks on mosques and Muslims would not be tolerated.

Musk has aided Robinson in amplifying his anti-Muslim rhetorichaving responded to one of his posts, while also allowing his banned documentary to be played on the social media platform.

This week a reporter from the Mail watched on as Robinson, armed only with his phone, seamlessly merged enjoying the luxury of a £400-a-night all-inclusive hotel with rabble-rousing.

Having first secured his lounger with a towel, there were trips to the gym, for pizza and to the pool - all interspersed with a constant stream of inflammatory social media posts.

There were messages attacking the police for going soft on Muslim protests, on the media for labelling protesters as 'far-Right' and on Home Secretary Yvette Cooper for calling them 'thugs'.

He also shared a series of fake stories over the weekend including claims that Muslims had stabbed protesters in Staffordshire and attacked three women in Scotland.

But as Ms Brown put it to us, 'because he's been right [about some things], like a broken clock is right twice a day, a broken activist can also be right twice a day'.

'You can get a couple of viral videos that are actually correct,' she says. 'You can say a few things here and there that are correct, and people just assume that you're doing your homework, and that everything that you're saying has been fact checked and is also correct.'