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For many people in the U.K., and for not a few of us outside of the U.K., Tommy Robinson was for a long time the only person in that country, or at least by far the most prominent person in that country, who dared to speak the whole ugly truth about Islam. For a long time, meanwhile, Nigel Farage, for all his heroic efforts to separate the U.K. from the EU, carefully dodged the subject of Islam, choosing to focus instead, more broadly and vaguely, on the need for a return to total U.K. independence from the EU and for radical immigration reform, all the while ignoring the main reason for that need. Others followed the same playbook. By doing so, they avoided – and abetted – the demonization to which Tommy was subjected by the British media, police, courts, and (not least) the London-based beau monde.

As the impact of Islam on British society has become clearer in recent years, and as supporters of Hamas have paraded repeatedly in the British streets in the wake of October 7, more and more Brits are clearing their throats and admitting that they agree with Tommy. Many, indeed, acknowledge that they agreed all along. The failure of both major British parties to muster up any courage on this issue has made it possible for the Reform UK Party, which addresses the topic far more bluntly, to rise out of nowhere and reach a level of public support that suggests it may soon supplant the Tories as the legitimate voice of conservatism and patriotism, of frankness about border control and about the threat that many immigrants represent to the nation’s traditional freedoms and cultural values. In short, Reform US is Britain’s answer to the MAGA movement, very possibly poised to win a majority in the Commons within a few years – presumably in a 2029 election – and place one of its members in 10 Downing Street.

Or is it comparable to MAGA? The other day, podcaster Dan Wootton warned that “Tommy Robinson supporters are being purged from the party” and played excerpts from a recent interview with GB News in which Farage, who serves as head of Reform UK, not only called mass deportations of illegal or criminal aliens “a political impossibility” but affirmed flat-out that he wouldn’t even want to carry out such deportations if he could. Farage further professed that his aim was “a balanced migration policy,” apparently meaning a so-called “net zero” approach, to which his interviewer countered that such a “balanced” policy would mean that hundreds of thousands of immigrants would continue to enter the country every year. In response to that observation, Farage pathetically replied that “it may well be, but we have to start somewhere.” He also maintained that the current dramatic change in the UK’s demography as a result of all that immigration is of no concern to him.

All in all, in fact, it was an exceedingly odd interview, given that the only reason why Reform UK has become a serious political player is that it has won the support of millions of ordinary citizens who support the policies that Farage is now rejecting. After playing those excerpts of Farage’s interview, Wootton himself interviewed Richard Tice, Farage’s present second-in-command and immediate predecessor as head of Reform UK, who said all the right things about the UK’s disastrous economic situation, about the new Labour government’s extreme distaste for free speech, and about the advent of “two-tier policing” in Britain (whereby the cops give wide berth to members of certain minority groups who commit actual crimes but are quick to arrest white people for waving an English flag or telling the truth about the Koran on Facebook).

Wootton let Tice make these points, and agreed with him. But then Wootton stated that Farage and Dice had chosen to “throw people under the bus,” apparently in order to placate Britain’s legacy media, which hate them and hate their party. It wasn’t just Tommy, you see, who was given the bum’s rush. There were also several Reform UK candidates who’d been cut loose by the party simply because of one or two politically incorrect things that they’d posted on social media a decade ago – things, Wootton noted, that he might himself have said or written at some point. Tice responded that while he believes in free speech, he refuses to “defend the indefensible” because he wants Reform UK to be taken seriously as a “credible” political party that seeks to make “progress.” Wootton then asked him directly about Tommy Robinson: would someone who had attended a recent peaceful march that was organized by Tommy be considered ineligible as a Reform UK candidate? Tice actually spoke of the danger of Reform UK being “hijacked,” apparently by Tommy and his supporters. Identifying himself as a “critical friend” of Reform UK, Wootton went on to press Tice about the expulsion from the party of Tice’s former deputy.

A couple of days later, Wootton pointed out that another popular figure who’s been effectively canceled by Reform UK is longtime columnist Katie Hopkins – who, like Tommy, is a brave, perceptive, and outspoken truth-teller about the most verboten topics. I’ve seen her speak live in Oslo. She’s terrific. The audience of sane Norwegians at that talk welcomed her as a heroine and cheered her comments. As Wootton put it, excluding her from Reform UK is like Trump ruling, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Steve Bannon or Kari Lake or Dan Bongino to be over the line. Welcoming people like Tommy and Katie into fold, Wootton observed, would be a great way of shifting the “Overton window” – the range of views acceptable by the mainstream – back toward something resembling normality. Wootton also shared a clip of Douglas Murray acknowledging that Tommy isn’t allowed to say things that he’s permitted to say (sometimes, anyway) because Tommy, unlike Douglas, who attended Eton and Oxford, is a white working-class bloke from Luton.

Now, I’m not British, but when I look at Tice – a former Tory Member of Parliament – I see one more typical Westminster insider speaking in a posh accent and wearing what looks like a Savile Row suit. It seems to me that the House of Commons is called the House of Commons for a reason. Why does everybody there seem to have attended the same elocution school? Where are the real common Brits, of which Tommy is the foremost exemplar? This is a man who, while virtually everyone in the Commons – along with innumerable journalists, social workers, police officers, and judges — was implicit in the coverup of Muslim rape gangs who for decades had victimized thousands of young white girls in cities all over England, shone a light on this mass atrocity. This is a man who has made documentaries exposing these crimes and unmasking the systematic political agenda and all-around duplicity of the BBC. The fancy London types, no matter their party affiliations, are not enamored of him, but many an ordinary English citizen out in the provinces considers him nothing less than a national hero. To freeze people like Tommy out of a party that says it wants to fix the problems that Tommy was instrumental in bringing to light makes one wonder just how serious the leaders of Reform UK are about reform – and how much they’re just interested, like any other gang of well-spoken, nattily dressed pols – in gaining power even as they permit Britain to continue down the same disastrous path.