Tommy Robinson’s Inevitable Conviction

There have rarely been famous last words to match those uttered by clueless thug Ezra Levant of Rebel Media yesterday: “I’m back at the Old Bailey for Tommy Robinson’s trial. I’m optimistic - the last four judges in a row have sided with Tommy over Theresa May’s foolish attorney general. Maybe I’m naive but I think he’s going to win”. So it was that Stephen Yaxley Lennon was cursed by his own supporters.

Levant also demonstrates his crass ignorance of the law: he clearly has not read up on the law regarding Contempt of Court, and his constant attempts to claim that the judiciary is a tool of elected politicians is just plain flat wrong. Lennon got guilty yesterday, and he was always going to get guilty. It served his cause, and his supporters, to suggest otherwise. But only the deluded and ignorant could believe he would get off.

The arrival of Levant, along with two of his pals from North America and the inevitable appearance of self-confessed murderer Avi Yemini, was supposed to bring knowledge of Lennon’s trial to a wider audience. Instead, because none of them could be bothered to mug up on the law, it served only to propagate false hope and more ignorance.

The seriousness of what Lennon did in Leeds that day has now been revealed by Lizzie Dearden of the Independent (another of those real journalists who Lennon has attempted to intimidate): “Tommy Robinson has characterised his case as an establishment crackdown, but his Facebook live posed a real threat to actual victims”. Do go on.

“The defendants had been split into three trials for practicality, meaning that evidence, witnesses and victims would crossover. Judge Geoffrey Marson imposed a reporting restriction under the Contempt of Court Act postponing reports of proceedings until the end of the last trial”. And then along came Lennon.

“When Robinson broke it in such extraordinary fashion - a Facebook live video viewed by 10,000 people in real-time and millions since - it was at a particularly sensitive phase. The jury was out in the second trial, with first group awaiting sentence and the third yet to come … On the first day back after the weekend, five defence lawyers backed an application to dismiss the jury, arguing it was ‘inconceivable’ that jurors had not seen Robinson’s live stream or heard about it. One juror had mentioned his name as they re-started deliberations”. More than 20 men who later got guilty could have got away with it.

Got away with grooming, rape, all manner of abuse. Think about that. Stephen Lennon tells the world that he is protecting “his people” against all those predatory men. Yet his clumsy and selfish behaviour nearly did the very opposite. He’s a hypocrite.

And as for all the pleading by Lennon’s lawyers, this was pointless, as James Doleman, who knows the law, explained simply: “Breaching reporting restrictions is a ‘strict liability’ offence, like driving while holding a mobile phone, it doesn't matter what your intent was, or if you knew it was a crime, if you do it you're guilty”. Got it in one.

There was always going to come a time when Stephen Lennon’s little Wild West Show would encounter reality. Yesterday brought the start of that process. Next week he gets sentenced. And he’s likely to go to prison. Just rejoice at that news.

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