Patriot Platform: a combination of stupidity and danger

RF Podcast

In this month's podcast Alex is joined by author and activist Dave Renton to discuss his new book on the anti-fascist novel. Listen to discover the power of fiction, what makes a good anti-fascist novel, the enduring lessons of Cable Street and more. They also discuss the potential impacts of Patriot Platform. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or in the embed below!

Patriot Platform

When sentencing Daniel Thomas in 2016 for attempted kidnapping, after Thomas and accomplices broke into a man’s house with knives in an attempt to recover £10,000, the judge described three “stupid” men who perpetrated an “extraordinarily frightening incident.” In 2026 Thomas’s endeavors can be judged in almost exactly the same way.

Patriot Platform (PP), the organisation set up by Thomas (aka Danny Tommo) as a de facto Christian nationalist militia, ramped up its activity in September. The group started the month with a high-profile action blockading roads around the Port of Dover, and ended it with Thomas remanded in custody and facing a trial for multiple charges in March 2027. Having previously held loosely structured gatherings in Basingstoke and Warwickshire that appeared to be more about motivational speaking than practical action, PP’s Dover action was more focused and targeted. 

On the morning of 5 September, between 200 and 300 black clad and mostly masked men made their way to Dover in vans and lorries to blockade the A20 chanting “Stop the Boats” and “England Til I Die”. Local police appeared unprepared for the action. Reports in several newspapers suggested that when residents of nearby Preston-next-Wingham had contacted police on the Friday night to express concern about so many outsiders congregating in their village - with one even reporting that the men had been discussing attacking Muslims - no action was taken. The protest lasted for several hours and caused disruption to the main roads in and out of Dover, attracting much national and international press attention, but resulted in no arrests. 

Thomas, much like his mentor Tommy Robinson, uses social media to make money, rile up supporters, organise, and amplify racist narratives. It is a fairly chaotic style of political leadership, akin to a social media influencer rather than a political leader. Thomas has organised Patriot Platform largely in public view, streamed on X in rants in his car, speeches to groups of men in parks and later in frenetic chaotic clips shouting at police and, most recently, slashing at a boat carrying a French rescue worker. In contrast, the protest at Dover displayed a sharp logistical competency, despite the police seemingly being caught unawares. Both Thomas and Robinson have previously received money from a far-right American think tank (Middle East Forum) and rake in an inordinate amount from their audiences. There is a possibility that well-funded and well-organised actions like this become more common on the British far right, with the right leadership and direction.

On the same weekend, a reported crossing of a small boat heading towards Portsmouth led to Patriot Platform mobilising and attempting to block vehicles taking the asylum seekers away to a precessing centre in Manston, Kent. Around 140 people on the boat from France had previously been transferred to two RNLI lifeboats. The demonstration in Portsmouth involved both Patriot Platform supporters, once again mostly masked and in black, along with crowds of local people who had been mobilised on social media and by word of mouth, numbering around 500 in total. Some demonstrators attempted to film the asylum seekers as they arrived, some entered the sea to physically block the boats from landing. Among the disturbances at the protest, some police officers were assaulted and vehicles damaged, with 5 arrests made. One man, Del Somerville,  has already been jailed for 2 years after admitting violent disorder. A demo called by the South Coast Patriot group in Portsmouth the following weekend was counter protested by Stand Up To Racism (SUTR). 

After the Daily Mail reported on PPs antics, supporters of the group including Thomas picketed the newspaper’s London offices, claiming that Thomas’s mother had been “doxxed” by the publication and demanding that she be bought a new house. According to various reports, Thomas used his mother’s address in his Companies House filing for his roofing company, RMT Roofing Specialists. Having initially promised to return every day until he got a pay-out for his mum, the Mail refused to play ball and PP failed to turn up again.

Later in the month, associates of Thomas livestreamed him allegedly in the act of slashing a migrant dinghy with a knife. The vessel, which had been at sea for over 30 hours after setting off from Normandy, was pursued by Thomas and his supporters in the Channel. The people on board had already been taken off the dinghy by the time Thomas arrived but a French rescue worker was still on board. PP supporters and others gathered at Gosport that night, with word having gone out that a dinghy was supposedly landing. The Daily Echo reported that “crowds of masked protestors are now confronting a police line to chants of “let them drown” sung by a child over a megaphone”.

Thomas was arrested 2 days later on suspicion of various offences and later charged with criminal damage and withholding his phone PIN from the police. After his arrest, a few hundred PP supporters rallied at Basingstoke Police Investigation Centre to protest his arrest, including various auditors and Gergory Moffitt (aka Young Bob). Already on bail for charges from his Dover activities in April 2026, and due in court for those in October 2026, Thomas appeared in court via videolink from prison holding a copy of the Bible and was remanded in custody with a trial date set for March 2027. 

In many ways PP represents the latest manifestation of a British far right obsessed with migrants (cast as invaders), Islam and the traitorous left. PP’s website, seemingly entirely generated by AI, contains a map of local ‘patriot’ groups, apparently following a model similar to that of the English Defence League (EDL). Dover itself has long been the site of far-right activity, most notably in recent memory in 2015 when far-right groups were fiercely opposed by anti-fascists.

Like the EDL, PP practises a similar form of reactionary community defence, in which actions are ostensibly taken to protect innocents, usually white children, from the predation of non white men. This is a common mobilising strategy on the far right. We can see it in the attacks on migrant hotels in the riots following the Southport killings, the recent arson attack on a newly built block of flats in Glasgow and in the patrols of local Patriot groups who have filmed themselves harassing non-white men. It has even extended as far as the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), a historic apolitical organisation that fulfils international obligations for sea rescues. RNLI staff and volunteers have been identified, abused as “traitors” and threatened online, with one lifeboat station in Portsmouth temporarily closing for “staff welfare” reasons, soon after local anti-migrant demonstrations.  

It is still the case that the biggest, most violent far-right protests come after some kind of serious news event, for example the Southport killings. PP’s activity is not yet on the scale of the EDL, and with Thomas in jail it may lose momentum. The movement is still organised around his celebrity and online clout, and whilst outrage around his detention has spurred on action from local groups, it may drop off in the intervening months, especially as Robinson appears unwilling to step into Thomas’s role. PP will still need to be opposed by anti-racist and anti-fascist activists, in greater numbers. It has always been sustained pressure from the left, through grassroots community mobilisations, that has defeated the far right, rather than the calls for repressive state intervention.

What has changed is the broader political context that has given rise to PP. Since Brexit, and particularly since the 2024 general election, the mainstream right has radicalised and is now split between Reform UK, the Conservatives and Restore Britain. Figures in all parties have, in one way or another, voiced approval for the Dover protest. Donna Jones, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, said the protest was ‘a real wake up call to the government that the British people are fed up with the lack of control of our borders.’ Lee Anderson, MP for Reform, said ‘I fully support the British people who turn up in huge numbers to peacefully protest.’ Restore has been even more vocal in support for the action. All three parties are committed to fulfilling, to some degree or another, the demands of PP. This is, perhaps, the most worrying aspect of our current moment.

Homeland

The Homeland Party finally seems to have folded, with social media accounts closed down and leader Kenny Smith disappearing from view. Homeland was formed in 2023 as a split from Patriotic Alternative (PA). In Homeland’s inaugural meeting Smith’s criticisms of PA included “the lack of political direction, lack of political focus, the lack of progress on becoming a registered political party, [the lack of] any support for people who want to do community politics”, and referenced disagreements over rules for vetting and membership. PA had been infiltrated multiple times and antifascists had found out the details of secret events, leading Smith to call for stricter vetting procedures than PA leader Mark Collett would agree to. Former PA West Midlands regional organiser Connor Marlow had claimed “Yesterday PA died… We are the future of nationalism”.

Homeland grew quickly at first, buoyed by endorsements from fascist social media influencers, and made links with parties from around Europe that had enjoyed recent electoral success. In 2025 it claimed around 1400 members. Homeland members were active online and party branding seemed ubiquitous on social media comments sections, though it outstretched the party’s real world reach. Despite their aspirations, Homeland failed to embed themselves in communities or make any significant electoral inroads, and some members complained that the leadership seemed more interested in foreign jollies paid for by party subs than addressing problems at home. Further disagreements emerged around who was given leadership positions or invited to speak at conferences, leading to more members leaving. This summer internal communication groups were shuttered, with outward-facing accounts now gone. Mark Collett has now had his turn to write an obituary for Homeland, lamenting that “an entire intake of radical, young, enthusiastic activists has been burned and driven away by one man’s egotistical drive to relive the early 2000s by means of creating the illusion of success”.

Elsewhere

Members of Active Club England (ACE) were photographed doing Nazi salutes and displaying a swastika flag at a venue in Underwood, Nottinghamshire. Active Clubs are far-right groups training in martial arts and in some countries represent one of the main forms of far-right organisation and recruitment. ACE claims to have seven local chapters, though some appear dormant.

On 26 September Sheffield Patriots organised a march in Sheffield. Attendees included the ever-present neo-Nazi Ryan Ferguson and various live-streamers, but they were outnumbered and opposed at every turn by antifascists. The same weekend Nick Tenconi spoke at an anti-immigration march in Dudley and in Manchester a small number of PP activists and auditors were faced by hundreds of counter-protestors.

White Vanguard (WV) leader Kai Cunningham has left the organisation, having been accused by multiple former comrades of being a police informant, and has been replaced by Declan Young. Searchlight had previously reported on rumours of a murder plot against Young planned by members of WV split Aryan Front, apparently followed by police visiting Young and issuing an Osman warning - a notification of a credible threat to life. WV announced Young’s appointment as an “orderly change within its leadership”.

On 27 September a handful of WV members, in their customary black bloc regalia, protested outside the Fabian Society Festival of Ideas conference in Liverpool.

Britain’s First’s (BF) main event was a ‘March for Remigration’ in Tamworth, Staffordshire, attracting a couple of hundred attendees. BF plan on holding their November ‘Rally for Remigration’ in Coventry indoors, curiously attributing this decision to “worsening weather”. Recent events haven’t attracted the numbers BF may have hoped for, and perhaps the triumphant proclamation on their website that “Britain First activists commandeer a busy roundabout in Kent” shows the lowering of their sights.

Calvin Robinson, right-wing commentator and priest now of the tiny English Catholic Church of North America, has indicated a shift further to the extremes with social media posts blaming Jews for what he sees as the world’s ills such as Marxism, Feminism and Liberalism, claiming, “It is the Jews. It has always been the Jews”.