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Times
27-05-2025
- General
- Times
Tommy Robinson released from prison after sentence cut by months
Tommy Robinson has been released from prison after his sentence for contempt of court was reduced by the High Court. The far-right activist, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, left HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes on Tuesday after his 18-month sentence was cut by four months last week. Shortly after his release, Robinson, 42, was filmed speaking on his X account for about 20 minutes with longer hair, a bushy beard, and a rosary around his neck. JORDAN PETTITT/PA Robinson declared his intention to organise a free speech festival in London for his supporters later in the year. He was jailed in October after admitting multiple breaches of an injunction made in 2021, which barred him from repeating false allegations against a Syrian refugee who successfully sued him for libel. This included having 'published, caused, authorised or procured' Silenced, a documentary which contained libellous allegations, in May 2023. A second claim was issued in August last year concerning six further breaches, including playing the film at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square. Asked how he was feeling after his release, Robinson told supporters: 'Unfortunately, in a country that doesn't believe in free speech, being a citizen journalist … this place [prison] is an occupational hazard.' He claimed he had 'faced relentless attacks from the British state, wielding lawfare as a weapon in order to silence me'. Robinson said attempts to censor him over the years had not worked, and thanked Elon Musk because 'if we didn't have X, everyone would just think I lied'. In the ruling which reduced Robinson's sentence, Mr Justice Johnson said he displayed an 'absence of contrition or remorse' but had shown a 'change in attitude'. The judge said: 'He has given an assurance that he will comply with the injunction in the future, that he has no intention of breaching it again, and that he is aware of the consequences of what would happen if he breached the injunction again.' The decision to release Robinson early came after he lost a legal battle over the length of his sentence in April. Three senior judges at the Court of Appeal — including the lady chief justice, Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill — found there was 'no reasonable basis' to alter the prison term.
Telegraph
21-02-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
New laws should stop criminals, not make the rest of us miserable
At the root of much bad policy in Britain lie two truths. The first is that private grief is seldom a good basis for public policy. The second is that it is almost impossible for politicians to say no to a Campaigning Mum. The latest instance of this is the Government's crackdown on the online sale of knives. I hadn't even realised that this was a Campaigning Mum policy; finding increasingly absurd new ways to restrict access to knives – even as knife crime surges upwards regardless – is the Home Office's preferred displacement activity. This country loves banning things much more than it likes asking hard questions. But no, up pops BBC Breakfast to put me straight: 'If this would have been in place years ago my son would have been here today', declares Pooja Kanda, whose son was stabbed to death. But at least, the Corporation reassures us, there is 'a new law in his name which will introduce stricter rules for retailers selling knives online'. There's another unfortunate truth: no worthwhile legislation ever bore someone's first name. Passing general restrictions in response to very particular circumstances is an absurd way to legislate. For is it really likely that Ronan Kanda would still be here in the event that the Government had cracked down on online sales earlier? Were his killers too young to simply buy one in a shop? Did their parents keep padlocks on their kitchen drawers? The fact is that violent crime is much less responsive to weapon restrictions – the British State's one response – than policymakers dare admit. As mentioned, knife crime has almost tripled since its post-2010 low point despite all the new laws; even gun crime doubled in the ten years after the handgun ban, and few people have any of those lying around in their kitchen. Yet what the Government seems oddly shy about calling Ronan's Law – perhaps because it's trying to pretend this is its response to the Stockport murders – is just the tip of the iceberg, and sadly it isn't just Labour who go in for this sort of feel-good displacement activity. In the last Parliament the Conservatives passed 'Martyn's Law', an onerous set of new costs and impositions on our hard-pressed entertainment sector. It was officially a response to the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing but, as is the norm with this sort of thing, bore absolutely no relation to the findings of the official inquiry. Easier to make the custodian of the village hall do counter-terrorism training than acknowledge that the Arena's (perfectly adequate) security hesitated to confront the bomber for fear of looking racist. Conservative ministers also at least 'considered' calls by another coalition of 'grieving families' to ban young drivers from carrying passengers, and restrict their licences until they're 25 – and to hell with the fact that they're legally adults or the practical consequences. Such demands from the bereaved make emotional sense; whilst nothing can bring their loved ones back, a new law at least lets them tell themselves that their loss wasn't for nothing. It's also difficult for their opponents to avoid getting typecast as heartless libertarians when a policy's advocates are exclusively covered in sympathetic human-interest style. But Ronan's Law is bad law, as is Martyn's. Each is yet another attempt by the Home Office to look busy without doing anything useful, and even if it worked it would do so only by imposing restrictions on the law-abiding majority rather than focusing on the criminals. Repeal the lot. The bereaved deserve our sympathy – but not to build monuments to the departed out of needless expense and wasted time.
