He was speaking outside court ahead of a libel trial
He was speaking outside court ahead of a libel trial (Picture: Ruptly)

EDL founder Tommy Robinson has urged ‘everyone’ to vote for Boris Johnson at the upcoming General Election.

He said: ‘Everyone should vote for Boris Johnson.

‘And I’m so happy with what Nigel Farage has done. He should attack the Labour heartlands. If we want Brexit… If we believe in democracy, we have to have Brexit.

‘So yeah. Go Boris!’

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, made the comments outside the High Court where he is being sued for libel.

The case relates to comments about a Syrian refugee who was filmed being attacked in a school playground.

Up Next

A video showing Jamal Hijazi, then 16, being pushed to the ground and threatened with drowning at Almondbury School in Huddersfield provoked outrage and a flood of public sympathy after it was shared online last year.

Robinson, 36, made a comment on Facebook about the video which is the focus of the case.

Jamal’s barrister Ian Helme said Robinson, who he described as ‘a right-wing provocateur’, then published ‘two videos making very serious allegations against Jamal’.

The barrister said Jamal was ‘a schoolboy and a Syrian refugee who has faced horrific bullying at school’, adding that the effect of the videos was that he ‘now has his nascent reputation trashed to one million people’.

The court heard that Robinson’s defence at trial would be that his statements were true.

epa07995677 Far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson outside the High Court in London, Britain, 14 November 2019. Robinson is being sued by Syrian schoolboy, Jamal Hijazi, 16, after Robinson accused refugee Hijazi of assaulting white school girls. EPA/ANDY RAIN
Tommy Robinson outside the High Court in London yesterday (Picture: EPA)

Robinson attended a preliminary hearing in London yesterday, which set a timetable for a six-day trial to be heard at some point in 2020.

William Bennett QC, for Robinson, said the case would come down to the ‘oral testimony of one witness against another’.

He added that his client’s defence would focus on ‘those people who say they were assaulted by the claimant and the claimant’s denials that he assaulted them’.

In documents filed with the court on Robinson’s behalf, he alleges that the attack on Jamal shown in the video was in retaliation for a threat made earlier that same day.

The value of Jamal’s claim in damages is for up to £100,000.

Got a story for Metro.co.uk?

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk. For more stories like this, check our news page.