All summer long the press — along with a depressing number of commentators and politicians — warned of a “summer of violence,” supposedly echoing last year’s riots in British cities. At times their warnings felt less like reporting and more like an attempt to foment unrest themselves, an embrace of mob politics.
The reality fell far short of the breathless coverage in the Mail and the Telegraph. Calls for a “huge nationwide wave” of protests outside asylum seeker hotels produced about 300 people in Nuneaton, 100–200 in Altrincham, a few dozen in Canary Wharf, and a grand total of six in Wolverhampton. For all the headlines, the protests drew fewer people than a non-league football match.
That didn’t stop right-leaning papers and influencers licking their lips at the prospect of chaos.
The supposed climax came with Saturday’s far-right march through London led by Tommy Robinson. Organisers claimed one million; the reality was closer to 100,000 — still far larger than previous English Defence League events, but nowhere near their boasts. The march was fuelled in part by the sheer number of football fans in the capital that day.
Predictably, the event brought attacks on police, public urination, open racism, and thuggery. But the more worrying element was not just the crowd in London — it’s the much larger number of people radicalised online. An old school friend posted a clearly AI-generated photo of the march; when I pointed out it was fake, he blocked me.
What’s striking is how many ordinary people now see themselves in these marches. Not neo-Nazis, not conspiracy theorists, just “happy patriots.” The stigma once attached to far-right politics has broken down. Many marchers would never call themselves racists or fascists, but they were content to march alongside those who proudly do. For them, these are the only voices listening, the only ones speaking their language. This is particularly true for people who identified strongly with Brexit, and for whom it’s failure hit hard.
Nigel Farage is leading in the polls, but not yet by enough to convince me his victory is inevitable. The rise of Robinson is a problem for him. Robinson’s chosen party — Advance UK, with Elon Musk as its celebrity backer — has little traction. If it ever did, it would draw support from Reform, fracturing their base.
Meanwhile, Reform is being dragged ever further right. Their conference featured anti-vaxxer Aseem Malhotra and Lucy Connolly — a far-right cause célèbre but toxic with mainstream voters.
So why the constant drumbeat from politicians and the press about violence and unrest?
Because a key tactic in the far-right playbook is to convince the public that society is collapsing — that things are so dangerous, so chaotic, that only extreme measures will do. Nigel Farage, Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson: their politics may seem distasteful, their calls to abandon rights like the EHCR unwelcome. But if things feel bad enough, some voters will decide it’s worth giving them a try.
And if it takes mob violence to push people in that direction, a section of the press and political class seems more than happy to cheer it on.