Danny Tommo (Daniel Thomas, 37), the anti-illegal-immigration activist and former Tommy Robinson security guard, pleaded guilty at Portsmouth Crown Court on Thursday morning to criminal damage for slashing an empty migrant dinghy in the Solent off Gosport on 22 September, during a livestream, after seven weeks on remand. He appeared by video link from HMP Winchester.
Judge James Newton-Price said he would proceed to sentence without a pre-sentence report, noting “an issue about the maximum sentence.” The defendant “has been in custody for seven weeks, and I don’t want to delay it unduly,” the judge said. He will be sentenced at 9.30am on Wednesday, 18 November. Thomas pleaded not guilty to failing to comply with a Section 49 notice, for refusing to give police his phone PIN. Prosecutor Joel Smith accepted the guilty plea to criminal damage and asked for the PIN count to lie on file.
Thomas, from Hampshire, is known online as Danny Tommo and founded Patriot Platform in June 2026. As of 10.45am today he had about 177,000 followers on X, 210,000 subscribers on YouTube and 448,000 followers on Instagram. His barrister, Simon Pentol KC, has described him to the court as a professional roofer, a father of four and “the full-time provider.” He was jailed for two years in 2016 after being convicted of attempted kidnapping.
The National Pulse has previously reported that an initiative known as Operation Overlord, organised by Tommo, was linked to the arrest in Calais of two British men for alleged inciting hatred. He was not among those arrested.
On 22 September, at around 4.30pm, he live-streamed himself from a boat in the Solent off Gosport. Prosecutor Kevin Lucie told Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court that Thomas “observed the migrant occupants of a dinghy being assisted by the RNLI, Border Force, and the French Coastguard,” then “instructed his boat to be steered towards the empty Rib that was adrift.” Lucie said he armed himself with a knife and slashed the boat as a Frenchman boarded from a rescue vessel.
In the livestream, heard at a later hearing, he said: “This is what needs to happen to everyone in these boats. Right, you’re on English territory, This is England, this is not France anymore. Get off the boat, you have time to get off the boat. This is not France. Take them back.”
He was arrested on the night of 23 September at a BP service station. Police said they suspected offences including criminal damage with intent to endanger life. He was charged on 24 September only with criminal damage and with the PIN count.
Tanweer “Tan” Ikram, the Deputy Chief Magistrate, refused bail at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court on 25 September, saying he was “satisfied there is a real possibility of an immediate custodial sentence in this case.” Judge Newton-Price KC refused bail again at Portsmouth Crown Court on 29 September. Thomas has been in custody since 25 September. At that hearing, Pentol offered a package of bail conditions that included GPS monitoring. Rebel News says the offer also included a curfew and a social media ban.
Ikram, one of the most senior magistrates in England and Wales, is no stranger to accusations of “two-tier” justice. As The National Pulse reported, he gave non-custodial sentences in February 2024 to three women convicted of a terrorism offence for glorifying Hamas paragliders after the October 7 massacres, telling them “emotions ran very high on this issue,” and later received a formal misconduct warning for “liking” a pro-Palestinian LinkedIn post. He handed a suspended sentence to the woman who threw a milkshake over Nigel Farage, yet jailed former police officer James Watts for 20 weeks over memes shared in a private WhatsApp group. Ikram is also a diversity official, sits on the commission that selects judges, and is an adviser to the British Pakistan Foundation, which dismissed “so-called ‘grooming gangs'” in 2023.
The value of the dinghy has not been reported, and that is the likely issue behind the judge’s remark about the maximum sentence. If the damage is £5,000 or less, the offence is a summary matter and the maximum sentence is three months. If it is worth more than £5,000, the maximum on indictment is ten years.
