“Temu ninjas”, “cowardly bell-ends”, people were saying, on the social media accounts of far-right guru “Tommy Robinson” (“coke gremlin”), his associate Daniel “Danny Tommo” Thomas (“fascist kidnapper”), and their self-described “journalist” Anthony Barnes. “Goons”. “Tossers”. “A load of gimps off a Megabus shouting at p&o ferries, lol”.

Even the far-right were split by the far-right’s latest stunt, which saw possibly 300 black-clad, balaclava’d men suddenly appear in Dover on the morning of September 5th. “The brainless idiots blocked the ferry FROM the UK to France and Belgium. They’ll probably block the airports mid-deportations too” one right-wing supporter was complaining. “I thought we wasnt the ones to hide our faces?” worried an “unfiltered right-wing patriot”. “Looking like antifa is not a good look, and don’t dress in black, your the good guys” pleaded a “reform voter”.

The demonstration at Dover had been staged by Danny Tommo’s “Patriot Platform”. According to “digital content creator” Anthony Barnes, the proud scourge of refugees and RNLI volunteers, it was “a group of working class men making a stand against resistance”.

There was, Barnes told GB News, over footage of black shirts roaring down Dover’s roads, “no shouting or aggressiveness”. “Whose streets? Our Streets”, “Send them back” “Stop the Boats” and “Christ is King” the men in black howled, since Patriot Platform was being framed as a Christian endeavour, “What’s Jesus got to do with it?” snorted a “stressed-out dad”, in agreement with countless church-going Christians. “You’d have nailed him up.”

Meanwhile, on the left several commentators appeared to feel that, since five members of Just Stop Oil were given record prison sentences just for planning blockades, the same approach should apply here. Moreover, thanks to new powers in the Crime and Policing Act 2026, to which Liberty and other human rights groups have thoroughly objected, the police could have designated the area a “mask-free” zone and did not.

In fact, as many noted, the curious behaviour of the police was that they did nothing for most of the morning. Outnumbered and under-resourced, it might have seemed sensible to let what was putatively a “peaceful” protest continue, and argue for increased funding later. Admittedly police chiefs decided in the 1970’s not to infiltrate far-right groups, on the understandable grounds that they were “very violent” and “criminal”, but they can hardly have been unaware that Daniel Thomas had been recruiting for a far-right militia for months

Moreover Thomas, who has been banned from France, had attempted to blockade Dover earlier this year; the port has a long history of being used by the far-right to rage about “migrants”; back in 2016 anti-fascists squared up to far-right, pro-Brexit, anti-immigration demos there. “Only a solid opposition to fascist activities from both sides of the Channel can shake this misplaced belief that racists have license to march through the streets unhindered, spreading fear and prejudice” reported Freedom News at the time.

Certainly Burnham’s government did not seem about to shake it, with its whiffling condemnation of “the behaviour in Dover and the traffic disruption it caused”. It was left to, of all people, Reform’s Farage and Jenrick to “deplore” it. “You should not be allowed to be masked up, balaclava’d up and go out and protest on the streets of our country. It is wrong at every level” Farage said.

Since he and Jenrick were just seen sniggering at young female climate protestors who were viciously attacked by violent pensioners at Reform’s conference, this may fairly be seen as desperate scrabbling for a remnant of political legitimacy. It follows the Channel Four/Verbatim undercover documentary which shows Farage and his two chief aides courting illegal foreign donations (in this case American) to Reform. Daniel Thomas had already boasted about being offered £30,000 by an “American think tank” to organise his first protest.

“We just don’t have British resident donors. British entities that would support us. That’s the grim reality” confessed Reform’s Head of Policy, James Orr, in a strangely overlooked segment of the C4 documentary. Promoted by Israeli favourite “Tommy Robinson”, the Dover blockade temporarily succeeded in its aim of grabbing headlines, causing local and national economic damage, and intimidating, indeed terrorising, with its calculated, Nazi-adjacent appearance.

And yet, despite grandiose claims, the Dover protest accumulated not many more than the much mocked gathering of Patriot Platform in August, and was meant to be a three day event, which actually lasted for about four hours. The protest then appeared again in Portsmouth, blocking in and terrorising asylum seekers; causing a stand off with the police, and the government to describe the participants, somewhat critically, as “thuggish”.

They have, in reality, arguably satisfied the appallingly loose definition of “terrorism” in the Terrorism Act 2000 (“the use or threat of serious violence against a person…where that action is designed to influence the government”). Anti-fascists continue to organise, but whether the government will prefer to keep focussing on raiding and prosecuting elderly peace and climate protestors instead is anyone’s guess.