Crowds gather in London for ‘unite the kingdom’ march featuring Tommy Robinson
Here are some images coming in today via the newswires of crowds gathering in central London for a march featuring far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
The rally is expected to attract upwards of 40,000 attenders, according to the anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate. A smaller gathering organised by the group Stand Up to Racism is also taking place.
Key events
Far-right activist Tommy Robinson said the “revolution is on” in a video posted to X where he claimed his ‘unite the kingdom’ protest was the largest demonstration in British history.
As we mentioned previously, any estimate on numbers at this stage is exactly that – an estimate – and organisers of marches are likely greatly inflate the number of those present.
Robinson told his followers that London was full of “patriots” before saying “the spark has started, the revolution is on”.
There are more than 400,000 people watching Robinson’s live stream on X as they chanted his name and “Keir Starmer is a wanker”.
A presenter on the stream said Robinson is “on his way” to the protesters now.
Helen Pidd
Here are some images from one of our reporters on the ground, Helen Pidd:
Counter-protesters in Russell Square, meanwhile, are milling around with placards that say “refugees welcome” and “oppose Tommy Robinson”, chanting: “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here.”
Helen Pidd
Many thousands of people are gathering for the march on Stamford St near Waterloo.
The crowd is 70-80% male and almost exclusively white.
Flags and banners are everywhere and people keep singing “Keir Starmer’s a wanker” to the tune of Seven Nation Army.
Hundreds of people were gathered outside Blackfriars station and lined along Blackfriars Bridge before the rally, PA reports.
Pockets of the crowd started chanting “fuck you Starmer” while many were wearing or holding England and Union flags
London Underground trains heading towards the station were packed with people seemingly on the way to the demonstration.
We’ve got a few more pictures from central London:
As ever with large protests or marches, it can be hard to get an accurate figure on how many people are attending, with estimates often relying in inflated figures from organisers.
However, the PA news agency is reporting that the number of attendees is already in the ‘thousands’.
The ‘unite the kingdom’ march and rally organised by Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, began in Stamford Street near Waterloo Bridge with crowds building since mid-morning.
The crowds will march towards the southern end of Whitehall.
Around 1,000 officers will be deployed in London in a bid to prevent clashes between protesters with opposing views.
More than a hundred people have gathered outside Russell Square before the ‘march against fascism’ counter-protest against the ‘unite the kingdom’ march, featuring far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Both are being held in central London on Saturday.
According to the PA news agency, people in Russell Square milled around with placards that said “refugees welcome” and “oppose Tommy Robinson”. Chants of “say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here” started at about 11.20am, the news agency reports.
Meanwhile men carrying union jack and St George’s flags were seen sitting outside central London pubs, while others carrying tins of alcohol walked towards the start point of Robinson’s march which will begin near Waterloo Bridge, reports the PA.
Eight police vans – from Warwickshire police, West Midlands police and the Metropolitan police – lined Woburn Street which runs alongside the square.
Ben Quinn
The Stand Up to Racism march to a rally at Whitehall will be led by a Women Against the Far Right contingent including the MPs Zarah Sultana and Diane Abbott.
Abbott said:
The far right are a menace to the whole of society. Their first targets, asylum seekers and Muslims, are broadening to all migrants, black people and on to trade unionists, all religious minorities and anti-racists.
Nick Lowles, of Hope Not Hate, said:
This is going to be big, but we are also talking about movement to the right of Reform UK and we still don’t know where it is going.
Badenoch accuses Starmer of lying about what he knew about Mandelson’s involvement with Epstein
Kemi Badenoch has accused the prime minister of lying about what he knew and when about Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
The Conservative party leader posted on X on Saturday:
Looks like the prime minister and Labour MPs spent the week lying to the whole country about what they knew regarding Mandelson’s involvement with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Badenoch referred to reports that Downing Street officials were aware of emails between Mandelson and Epstein when Keir Starmer defended the peer during prime minister’s questions. She wrote:
If No 10 had those emails for 48 hours before acting, it means he lied at PMQs and ministers lied again about new additional information. These are yet more errors of judgment.
The prime minister has very serious questions to answer. The only way to clear this up is full transparency about who knew what, and when.
Stand Up to Racism have organised a ‘Unite Against Tommy Robinson’ march which will begin at 12pm in Russell Square, before going down towards the Strand and ending in Whitehall.
Crowds gather in London for ‘unite the kingdom’ march featuring Tommy Robinson
Here are some images coming in today via the newswires of crowds gathering in central London for a march featuring far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
The rally is expected to attract upwards of 40,000 attenders, according to the anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate. A smaller gathering organised by the group Stand Up to Racism is also taking place.
Police are not using live facial recognition in its policing of the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ demonstration which is beginning on London’s south bank, reports the PA news agency.
It said:
We’re using a mobile CCTV van to help monitor the build up of crowds. Officers have been asked if it’s using ‘live facial recognition’ – we can confirm it is not.
The live facial recognition technology – which captures people’s faces in real-time CCTV cameras – was used in the policing operation at the Notting Hill carnival.
Robert Booth
It is the work shortcut that dare not speak its name. A third of people do not tell their bosses about their use of AI tools amid fears their ability will be questioned if they do.
Research for the Guardian has revealed that only 13% of UK adults openly discuss their use of AI with senior staff at work and close to half think of it as a tool to help people who are not very good at their jobs to get by.
Amid widespread predictions that many workers face a fight for their jobs with AI, polling by Ipsos found that among more than 1,500 British workers aged 16 to 75, 33% said they did not discuss their use of AI to help them at work with bosses or other more senior colleagues. They were less coy with people at the same level, but a quarter of people believe “co-workers will question my ability to perform my role if I share how I use AI”.
The Guardian’s survey also uncovered deep worries about the advance of AI, with more than half of those surveyed believing it threatens the social structure. The number of people believing it has a positive effect is outweighed by those who think it does not. It also found 63% of people do not believe AI is a good substitute for human interaction, while 17% think it is.
Next week’s state visit to the UK by Donald Trump is expected to signal greater collaboration between the UK and Silicon Valley to make Britain an important centre of AI development.
The US president is expected to be joined by Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI who has signed a memorandum of understanding with the UK government to explore the deployment of advanced AI models in areas including justice, security and education. Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the chip maker Nvidia, is also expected to announce an investment in the UK’s biggest datacentre yet, to be built near Blyth in Northumbria.
Keir Starmer has said he wants to “mainline AI into the veins” of the UK. Silicon Valley companies are aggressively marketing their AI systems as capable of cutting grunt work and liberating creativity.
Charlie Kirk killing invoked to bolster UK’s largest far-right rally in decades
Ben Quinn
The killing of Charlie Kirk is being used by Tommy Robinson to mobilise support before what is expected to be Britain’s largest far-right rally in decades, which will include speakers from Britain, the US and Europe.
Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, is among those listed to appear on stage at the rally in central London, which is expected to draw tens of thousands for an event that Robinson has been heavily attempting to monetise.
Other planned speakers on Saturday include Ant Middleton, a former UK special forces soldier who has increasingly used far-right rhetoric, as well as an MP for Germany’s far-right AfD party and a far-right Polish MEP.
Other Americans making the trip include Joey Mannarino, a self-styled US rightwing commentator who said: “All rape cases have just become fake to me” after a civil case alleging sexual assault by Trump.
However, there are doubts about whether one of the most high-profile speakers, the Canadian psychology professor and culture warrior Jordan Peterson, will appear.
While he is listed in the lineup and has been a supporter of Robinson online, he has made no mention of the event recently. His appearance would also pose questions about his continued association with the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a yearly gathering in London involving businesses and conservatives that has included the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, and Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK.
A pause on any new leave being booked has been imposed by police, who have had to contend with violence on the fringes of previous events involving Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
The rally is expected to attract upwards of 40,000 attenders, according to the anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate. A smaller gathering organised by the group Stand Up to Racism is also taking place.
The Stand Up to Racism march to a rally at Whitehall will be led by a Women Against the Far Right contingent including the MPs Zarah Sultana and Diane Abbott.
Pippa Crerar
There has been a joke going around Labour MPs over the past week about three envelopes in Soviet Russia. “Whenever you run into trouble, open them in order,” the instructions go. Envelope one says: “Blame your predecessor.” So he does – and it works. The party officials are satisfied. A year later, problems arise again. He opens envelope two. It says: “Restructure the organisation.”
He does a big reshuffle, changes some titles, and again buys himself some time. Finally, another crisis comes. He opens envelope three. It says: “Prepare three envelopes.”
The problem for Keir Starmer is that the MPs sharing the joke believe he has already opened his first two. It is becoming increasingly hard to find anybody in the Labour party who will argue that things are going anything other than disastrously for the government.
They fear that attempts to deal with the multiple difficulties faced by the prime minister over the past year – many of them self-inflicted errors such as the winter fuel duty decision, the freebies row and the handling of welfare cuts – have instead unleashed more chaos.
The most recent example of this is the sacking of Peter Mandelson. When ministers warned that his scandal-ridden history indicated he was more of a risk than an asset – even when the security services allegedly shared concerns – Starmer went ahead and appointed him.
Then, even though Mandelson had warned publicly that more “embarrassing” emails from him to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were about to be published, Starmer defended him at prime minister’s questions.
With his political judgment repeatedly questioned, Labour people turn to his “vision” for Britain. The problem is they can’t identify what the prime minister really believes in. Allies say he doesn’t like the “V word” and has made no secret of being a distinctly non-ideological politician.
Instead, he believes the government should demonstrate change by making a material difference to people’s lives, through schools, the NHS, the immigration system and the economy, even if that is in relatively slow, incremental steps.
“It’s hopeless,” one minister said. “Too many people feel the country is in decline and the only route back is big, radical solutions. We’re doing lots of good stuff but it barely gets noticed. It just doesn’t hit the mark.”
Starmer’s operation has ‘gone into the bunker’ after cabinet reshuffle, says Labour MP
Backbench Labour MP Olivia Blake said it feels like Keir Starmer’s operation has “gone into the bunker”.
Discussing last week’s reshuffle, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
It does feel like they’ve gone into the bunker, but they’ve actually thrown half the people out of the bunker at the moment, and we need to get back to a much more inclusive parliamentary Labour party (PLP), inclusive discussions happening with ministers and better representation around the cabinet table.
After a disastrous week in which Angela Rayner resigned and Peter Mandelson was sacked as ambassador to Washington, Labour MPs have begun to ask whether Starmer could be challenged as prime minister.
A number of MPs said a challenge was likely if local and Welsh elections went badly next May. Some said the one thing now protecting Starmer was the lack of an agreed replacement.
Blake said last week’s reshuffle saw a “narrowing” of representation of different parts of the party in ministerial positions:
People just felt that it was such a large reshuffle and, you know, people who were actually delivering in their posts were moved. And it just kind of felt like there was a real narrowing in who was sat around the table, and that can’t be positive, because I think there’s a sense that the leadership don’t like to be challenged.
Asked about the No 10 operation, she said it was “really embarrassing” if Starmer was not told about Lord Mandelson’s emails to Jeffrey Epstein soon enough, amid suggestions Downing Street was aware of the messages before the prime minister defended the ex-ambassador on Wednesday.
Blake said:
We saw through the welfare reforms that they did the same again. They didn’t tell Keir, they didn’t tell the prime minister how bad it was on the back benches. So, you know, he was putting statements out saying, ‘oh, some people can sound off’.
Well, the strength of feeling in the PLP was much, much deeper than that. And again, I just think that whoever’s gatekeeping the information to the prime minister needs to stop. They need to be getting stuff to him much earlier.
She also said backbenchers are frustrated after a number of “own goals” for the government. Blake, the MP for Sheffield Hallam, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it is “frustrating” that the good work the government has done is “not cutting through” and added:
Instead, we’ve had a number of kind of own goals, and that has meant that we’ve slipped heavily in the polls, and that we seem to be more interested in focusing on each other rather than what’s in the best interest of the country at the moment.
More on this story in a moment. Here are some other key developments:
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The killing of Charlie Kirk is being used by Tommy Robinson to mobilise support before what is expected to be Britain’s largest far-right rally in decades, which will include speakers from Britain, the US and Europe.
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Senior Labour MPs and the UK’s largest anti-fascist campaign group have called on Keir Starmer to mount a more heartfelt defence of diversity and anti-racism. They say they fear that Labour is not yet putting its “heart and soul” into the battle against Nigel Farage and the far right. Hope Not Hate’s chief executive has written a letter to Starmer in the lead up to a planned far-right demonstration in London on Saturday, demanding the prime minister speak up more against hate and racism.
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Lucy Powell has called for a “change of culture” inside Starmer’s Downing Street to make it more inclusive and better connected to MPs, promising that as Labour’s deputy leader she would when needed deliver difficult truths to the prime minister. Speaking to the Guardian after she secured 117 MP nominations in the battle to replace Angela Rayner, Powell said a sequence of what she called “unforced errors” by the government had left many Labour MPs and members frustrated.
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The bill to legalise assisted dying is a “licence to kill” that puts vulnerable people at risk, Theresa May has said, as the legislation was debated in the House of Lords for the first time. The former prime minister said she opposed the bill because she said people in England and Wales with disabilities, chronic illnesses or mental health conditions could feel under pressure to end their lives, and “because there is a risk that legalising assisted dying reinforces the dangerous notion that some lives are less worth living than others”.
