Tommy Robinson’s march was a drunken, coked-up mess

A row of men lean against the metal shutters that keep them out of Westminster tube station, as they piss through the bars directly onto the steps on the other side. Nearby a furious man in his early 30s yells “bring the cocaine here now, mate” into his mobile, as a crowd cajoles the staff of an overcrowded Tesco to open their doors so they can buy more booze. It is not yet 2pm.

Many of those at Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom march have started early. A group of four on a train from Kent have polished off a bottle of white wine, two mini bottles of red, and multiple bottled beers before pulling into London shortly before 9am. An older couple near Blackfriars stop outside an M&S to pour a half bottle of Jack Daniels into two litres of Diet Coke.

Whatever else is bringing today’s protestors together, they are determined to have a good time. The march route stinks of urine and weed, baggies are being passed around, and booze is everywhere. The crowd is mostly made up of young and middle-aged men – those taking just a quick glance would assume this is a football crowd. But there are exceptions.

An older man has decorated the two crutches he relies upon to walk with the colours of the union flag, and is wearing a full crusader outfit. Another man pushes a woman in a wheelchair, her oxygen tank below its seat. One woman tries to decorate her mobility scooter with George Cross bunting, but causes a horrible tangle and trip hazard instead.

The enormous crowd has gathered to mark… something, though it’s never entirely clear what that is. Robinson first advertised the event as a “march for free speech”. But most of the t-shirts and the few placards in among the flags are concerned with immigration.

“Hate this flag? I’ll help you pack,” reads one. Another t-shirt shows a fingerprint with a Union Jack design. “It’s in my DNA,” it reads. Another is a pastiche of the famous “LABOUR ISN’T WORKING” election poster, with the unemployment line replaced with a small boat.

Other placards allege Starmer and Labour are covering up for paedophiles. “Labour allowed our children to be groomed for votes,” one reads. “Labour how do you sleep at night, your evil,” reads another. The strangest is surely: “Qeir starmr dissolved the labour party”.

The crowd gets denser and ever-more fractious as it gets closer to its destination at Whitehall. It is angry, it is increasingly drunk, and it is looking for somewhere to channel that.

The most frequent chant “Keir Starmer’s a wanker,” to the tune of Seven Nation Army, is something the much smaller counter-protest would be equally happy to chant. “Rule, Britannia” breaks out occasionally, but not as often as “Oh Tommy Tommy – Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Robinson”. One group tries “Allah, Allah, who the fuck is Allah?” but only about a third of those around actually join in.

When the speakers on stage start, they seem equally unsure as to the actual aim of the protest. A rambling Laurence Fox repeatedly says “this is our home, we have nowhere else to go”, plus variations on that theme. A guest speaker from Canada celebrates the “hundreds of thousands” of people in front of him and the “millions” watching remotely – though at the time, even the inflated figures on X show just 800,000 or so views.

X’s owner Elon Musk joins later by video link, deciding the point of the rally is the overthrow of the government. “This is a government against the people and not for the people, this is why everyone is gathered here today… we don’t have another four years… there’s got to be a dissolution of parliament,” he says.

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Musk, who controls a social network routinely used by the government, and which is nominally subject to its regulation on hate speech and extremism, goes on to accuse Labour of “importing voters, swaying elections and taking your vote away from you” – a discredited far right conspiracy theory known as The Great Replacement.

The South-African born Musk, now a US citizen, then calls on “the people of Britain [to] take charge and actually ensure there’s a government that represents their interests and not a government that represents foreign interests”. He apparently does not see any irony in these remarks.

Obliviousness to irony was not in short supply. As the crowd waits for the speeches to start, someone sings Proud Mary – but it is the version made popular by Ike and Tina Turner, who faced racism across America. A church group from New Zealand later perform the Haka onstage, bringing Māori heritage to the least likely of audiences.

Bustling crowds wait for overwhelmingly non-white shop staff to serve up their alcohol, never wondering about who would turn up to scrub Westminster station clean of their urine at the end of the day.

This is a group who want the benefits of immigration and multiculturalism, but don’t want the bits they’ve taken against, and especially don’t want to have to think about any of those trade-offs or dilemmas.

Police estimate 110,000 people are here, far too many to fit onto Whitehall, leading to violent clashes between protestors and police even by mid-afternoon. By 6pm, there have been nine arrests, with police saying they would pursue many more people later. “The world is watching,” the crowd is repeatedly told. Speakers claim that this is a protest that cannot be ignored.

Except all around them, London is proving them wrong. 110,000 is a big rally, but the largest protest in London against the conflict in Gaza topped 300,000, while rallies against Brexit attracted crowds of 700,000. Both went ignored by government.

Even today, walking five minutes in any direction shows London carrying on as normal. Theatre crowds queued to get into the matinees of Cabaret and Phantom of the Opera. Around Blackfriars, runners completed charity 10ks and 25ks as part of an organised run. London hosted Millwall v Charlton and West Ham v Tottenham. The shoppers on Oxford Street had nothing to alert them this Saturday was different from any other.

“The world is watching,” Tommy Robinson told those on his march. But most of London, a city of nine million people, simply wasn’t.