While violence was erupting on the streets of Belfast, Tommy Robinson – real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – was in Moscow, staying at a luxury hotel and meeting Elon Musk’s father, Errol. He posted a video of himself alongside Errol Musk, apparently filmed in the hotel, in which he said: “We are going to go and cause some trouble.” He told The Guardian he had come to Russia “to see how this country got itself so well on to the straight and narrow and see the beauty of a civilised society here.” He also told them: “Russia is not the enemy of Britain. That narrative has long since died a natural death.”
Robinson had, in the days before the video was posted, shared a list of protest locations across the United Kingdom for Tuesday evening, posting: “The whole of the United Kingdom is hitting the streets tonight at 7pm following yet another invader attack on our people.” He did this from Moscow.
The timeline
The sequence of events matters. On Monday night, Hadi Alodid attacked Stephen Ogilvie on a street in north Belfast. Ogilvie lost his left eye and sustained serious injuries to his face, neck and back. Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese man granted refugee status under a Sunak-era fast-track scheme – as we reported in our Belfast fast-track piece – was charged with attempted murder.
Within hours, Robinson was posting the protest locations. By Tuesday evening, riots had broken out. Homes burned. A bus was set alight. Masked men chanted “get foreigners out.” As we reported in our Polanski Yusuf piece, Claire Hanna described what was happening as a “race-based pogrom.”
All of this Robinson was watching – and amplifying – from a hotel in Moscow, where he was meeting the father of the man who owns the platform he was using to share the protest lists.
Errol Musk had attended the annual Kremlin-backed economic forum the previous week.
What Robinson said about Russia
Robinson’s explanation for why he was in Moscow was not complicated. “I’ve come to see how this country got itself so well on to the straight and narrow and see the beauty of a civilised society here.”
The country he was describing as a “civilised society” is the country that invaded Ukraine in 2022, has been accused of war crimes including the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, and which UK intelligence has assessed could attack a NATO member as early as 2030 – the same assessment that prompted Defence Secretary John Healey to resign, as we reported in our Healey resignation piece.
“Russia is not the enemy of Britain,” Robinson said. “That narrative has long since died a natural death. There are those who benefit from pushing Russia as an enemy but everyone laughs at those people now.”
The people Robinson says “everyone laughs at” for pushing the Russia-as-enemy narrative include NATO, the UK government, the armed forces, the intelligence services and two recently resigned defence ministers.
Musk, Robinson and the Belfast connections
As we reported in our Hasan Musk Belfast piece, Elon Musk has been a long-standing supporter of Robinson. During the Belfast riots, Musk shared lists on X of protest locations – the same lists Robinson was posting. He also retweeted Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe’s post saying “Millions must go” alongside footage from the knife attack.
As we reported in our Polanski Musk piece, Musk also called Green Party leader Zack Polanski – who had asked for calm – a “scumbag and a traitor.” Musk did all of this from his home in the United States.
Robinson did his equivalent from a Moscow hotel, filmed alongside Musk’s father. “We are going to go and cause some trouble.”
The Labour response
Keir Starmer accused Musk of “interfering in our politics” and “trying to whip up division” in the wake of the Belfast attack. Labour Party chair Anna Turley identified both Musk and Robinson as “bad-faith actors” inflaming tensions: “There are bad-faith actors who are sitting often many, many miles away. It is easy for them to stoke these things up.”
She made a specific and pointed observation about the geography of the risk. “He’s not living in the kind of communities where we’re seeing this kind of activity. He’s not at risk. It’s mums and families and people living in those homes in Belfast and on the streets of Britain who are at risk. He has a responsibility – everyone in public and civil life has a responsibility to call for calm and not to stoke grievance or hatred or division or tension that puts vulnerable people and our communities at risk.”
This applies, with equal force, to Robinson. He was not at risk in his Moscow hotel. The people he was directing onto the streets of Belfast were.
The Russia question – and what it means
Robinson’s claim that Russia is not Britain’s enemy, delivered from a Kremlin-adjacent economic forum city alongside the father of the man who owns the platform he uses to organise British protests, is not a casual observation. It is a political position that aligns Robinson with a specific geopolitical argument: that Western institutions, NATO, the European security order, and the British government are the problem, not Russia.
This argument has a home in the online media ecology that Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani identified in his Makerfield ground report as powering Restore Britain’s growth among young men. It connects the domestic political project – attack immigration, attack the mainstream media, attack establishment politicians – to an international one in which Russia is a model of the “civilised society” Britain could be.
Mehdi Hasan told the News Agents USA, as we reported in our Platner Maine piece, that the same billionaire playbook used by Orbán, Erdoğan and Modi – buy the media, control the narrative – is now operating in the United States. Robinson’s Moscow visit, alongside Errol Musk, while Elon Musk amplifies protests on X from the US, suggests a version of that coordination that extends from Silicon Valley to the Kremlin’s economic forums.
Whether that is organised or merely aligned is a question for investigators. What is documented is the geography: Robinson in Moscow, calling Russia civilised, urging British people to take to the streets, filmed alongside the father of the man who owns the app they’re using to organise.
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