Danny Tommo Pleads Not Guilty as Rebel News Opens Legal Fund

Asked whether he would help, Tommo received Levant's agreement, with the Rebel News founder reaching out to a very senior criminal lawyer in London after midnight UK time. Danny's police interview and bail were first thing the next morning, and the defence costs remained unknown.

Daniel Thomas was charged with criminal damage after a video appeared to show him slashing at a dinghy in the English Channel, and separately with failing to disclose the PIN to his phone. He was remanded in custody before pleading not guilty at the Magistrates' Court that morning.

Reporter Will Godley told viewers that Daniel Thomas, 37 years old, faced two charges. The first was criminal damage relating to an incident in the English Channel on Tuesday, in which Thomas is accused of slashing a migrant dinghy while an emergency worker was on board. The second was failing to disclose the PIN number to his phone to police, under section 53 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

Thomas pleaded not guilty to both charges. He appeared via video link from Basingstoke Police Station wearing a black t-shirt and a silver coat.

According to the prosecution, the defendant live streamed himself in the English Channel to a large audience, and allegedly armed himself with a knife and slashed the boat while a French rescue crew member was on board. The court heard the boat was a single RIB dinghy used by migrants who had been rescued onto lifeboats before this took place.

A number of other supporters watched proceedings from an overflow courtroom.

They gathered outside the courtroom afterwards with several police officers watching on. About 300 Danny Tommo supporters had gathered peacefully outside Basingstoke Police HQ the previous night, chanting 'free DT'. The judge remanded him back into custody and he will next appear in court on Tuesday.

On Wednesday alone, 781 migrants arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel, the worst day recorded since Keir Starmer replaced Rishi Sunak as prime minister.

The programme revisited the overnight demonstration: 400 protesters gathered outside Basingstoke Police Station demanding the release of Danny Tommo, who was described in the broadcast as a far-right activist.

Paul Richards conceded the point, saying 'that's entirely fair'.

He called the comparison a 'neat trick' but said it doesn't work.

The Gurkhas would 'definitely be on our side' if it came to a war, he added.

Crossing numbers are obviously too high and the government has to get a grip on it, Richards said. He welcomed the launch of an inquiry into why it has gone 'so horribly wrong' this week from the Home Office.

The issue is 'really skewing our national conversation and our democracy', he said, using the moment to argue the episode shows the army is too small. He has long advocated doubling the size of the army.

The presenter tested Richards because he 'seems to know your numbers'. Richards first said 83,000 across the Channel; the presenter replied no — since Andy Burnham became prime minister.

Richards then guessed 40,000, and then said he had no idea. Burnham became prime minister on 20 July, the presenter said, giving the correct answer as 'over 6,000'. Richards responded: 'which is 6,000 too many, isn't it?'

Andy Burnham, when he came in, started focusing on free buses and getting people off the streets while 'this whole thing is going on', the presenter argued. Getting people off the streets, the presenter said, is counteracted by having to house people arriving in the country, and asked whether the Labour government has been 'a bit lacklustre' on the problem.

Richards said no — they are doing 'everything you can reasonably do', and that this should not come at the expense of tackling rough sleeping and getting people off the streets by Christmas. The presenter called the two aims a contradiction; Richards said it is not one or the other, 'you can do both'.

The most important thing for him, he said, is to fast-speed up processing so that those who are not supposed to be here are dealt with — while those with a right to remain go into the housing market 'same as everybody else'.

The presenter said they are not able to send him back, and asked how the Labour government plans to send such people back.

Richards said the view is that that man should not be here, and the presenter pressed the question of how the government plans to remove such a person.

The presenter said the Rwanda plan was thrown out and 'didn't work'; Richards said it was 'a very expensive way of doing it' and compared it to the contingency hotels, which also didn't work.

Richards set out what he wants done: send home, or somewhere else, as fast as possible, the people who are not supposed to be here. Work with the French far more so the boats don't arrive in the first place.

He wants to see action for 'all this money we're spending in France', and more people trained up to disrupt the boats and stop what he called 'this evil trade', which he says is what everybody wants.