A second-generation immigrant himself, the son of Irish parents, he isn't calling for Muslims to be deported, or even for a freeze on Muslim immigration: "I think immigration's good, I think it's been good for the country, but at the same time uncontrolled immigration is a time-bomb, and we're producing areas now that don't resemble anything to do with this country any more." He wants every sharia court operating in this country closed, and he's tough on terrorism: "Anyone who's arrested for terrorism charges, don't ever let them out of jail. Send a tough stance. If they're not from here, deport them. Stick their human rights." On mosques, he doesn't want existing ones closed down, simply, "Stop building them until we address what's being taught. Until we address these issues."

These are not the views of a Nazi, or someone from the far-Right.They're the fairly right-wing views of an ordinary man who left school with ten GCSEs to study to become a carpenter, and who may well have once been a football hooligan. I asked Robinson if he'd ever been one, and he denied it, but it's hard to see how else he would have such clout among the national fraternity of football hooligans. Later, when we're discussing the dangers of inviting unknown "experts" to make speeches at EDL events, he suggests that he might just make the speeches himself: "I know my past, be it not all that good. But it's got nothing to do with racism." 

In Manchester, inside the EDL enclosure on the green of Piccadilly Gardens, behind two rows of riot police and a squadron of frothing police dogs, it's pretty clear that that's what most of these guys are: if not actual football hooligans, then certainly the football hooligan type. (And what could be more pointless than shouting abuse at football hooligans? These are the experts at verbal abuse, it's what they do. The rage of UAF has been temporarily reduced to one middle-aged woman — in a high-visibility jacket — screaming "fascist scum!" into a megaphone. The EDL respond with an obscene version of the terrace favourite, "You're not singing any more.")

Setting aside the possibility that Tommy Robinson is some kind of Machiavellian operator who knows exactly what to say to a reporter, the next question is: are there far-Right elements mingling with his group? On the other side of the green, a representative of Love Music, Hate Racism has claimed in a speech to have seen someone wearing a BNP cap, and someone else wearing a Zyklon B T-shirt. But I wander around looking for such signs and see none. Robinson has already told me how they dealt with the guy who was caught performing a Nazi salute in a well-circulated photo from a previous protest:

"Now, he got on the bus, he give the Sieg Heil, as soon as the doors on the bus shut, there was four of them, they got beat up. We stopped the bus and kicked them off. They can send the message back to all their other far-Right, National Front scumbags: You're going to get beat up if you go to these English Defence League protests. On the first UPL protest in Luton, they got run everywhere, and the police stood there and looked in shock as all Luton's local lads smashed the National Front out of the town. Took all their leaflets off them and said, ‘Get out of our town, you ain't welcome here'."