“Do you know who I am?”
This is what Daniel Thomas asked a bewildered-looking police officer after, at that point, a four-hour standoff on Eastney Beach in Portsmouth.
It was the second of two anti-migrant demonstrations claimed to have been co-ordinated by Thomas, 37, this weekend, which drew hundreds of balaclava-clad anti-migrant demonstrators, almost all of whom were men.
The first was organised in Dover and saw roads blockaded by crowds dressed in black, drawing comparisons to the “Blackshirts”, the paramilitary wing of Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party in Italy, as well as Oswald Mosely’s British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.
The crowd’s shouts of “stop the boats” resulted in disruption to the ferry service and people’s holidays, with no small boat arrivals to the UK that day.
The second was spontaneous, triggered by Thomas receiving a tip off that migrants rescued from the Channel were en route to his home town of Portsmouth. He began to live stream around 8.30pm once he reached a road block where crowds were attempting to stop migrants being processed.
He filmed himself and two other men running to the coast, where he entered the sea and began to shout at the staff working there before promptly vomiting.
During his almost 4.5 hour long stream, Thomas continued to encourage what police say was a group of around 200 people to protest. The protesters blocked roads for hours and had vowed to stay all night to prevent the new arrivals from being taken to Manston, outside Ramsgate in Kent, where small boat arrivals are processed.
The demonstration ended about 3am, when police obtained a dispersal order and threatened arrests.
These two events have catapulted Thomas into the mainstream attention, but The i Paper has been tracking his activity over the last 12 months, since first infiltrating a flag-raising group in Birmingham, some 160 miles from his home. Thomas helped amplify the activities of the Raise the Colours group before a spat over power and money saw him turfed out.
Who is Danny “Tommo” Thomas?
Thomas goes by “Tommo”. He smokes “fags”, talks about “the lads” and claims to speaks on behalf of “the working class”. According to the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, Thomas attended a fee paying private school in Hampshire.
He grew up on Hayling Island, and spent most of his life in Portsmouth. In 2016, aged 27, he was jailed for two years after pleading guilty to attempting to kidnap a man at knifepoint in a case of mistaken identity.
He has worked as a bricklayer, a sales and marketing manager, and in web design, according to reports. The Telegraph states he was a tank driver with the King’s Royal Hussars before he was medically discharged before seeing active service.
Men with their faces covered turned up in Portsmouth after Thomas issued a rallying call. (Photo: Youtube/Thomas)In a YouTube video in April this year, Thomas claimed he was first introduced to hate influencer and former EDL leader Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, after his “father and mother bought one of his books”.
He described attending a protest in Downing Street after Robinson was imprisoned for contempt of court in 2019.
“I took a loudspeaker. I started talking about the the injustice that had happened to Tommy. I started talking about, you know, if this can happen to him, it can happen to any of us. We need to stand up to this. And people listened,” he said.
He would go on to become a close associate of the anti-migrant activist and was widely reported to have worked as Robinson’s bodyguard. The pair enjoyed a sunny holiday together in Tenerife in July 2025.
As England flags and Union Jacks began to be raised across the country last summer in response to the small boats crisis. Thomas linked up with the Birmingham-based Raise the Colours group, emerging as co-leader with Ryan Bridge.
The pair grew their social media followings, filming themselves travelling to the northern French coast where they filmed themselves slashing abandoned dinghies and ultimately getting banned from France by French authorities.
Bridge and Thomas also hatched a plan to take UK police by surprise and storm the Channel with boats under the banner of “Operation Overlord”.
They were overheard loudly planning the mission – which never came to fruition – over a pub lunch, unlike the real “Operation Overlord” – the codename for the Allies’ invasion of occupied Europe during the Second World War – which was considered a complete success and was planned in absolute secrecy.
Thomas launches ‘Patriot Platform’
Cracks started to appear after Thomas and Bridge were banned from France alongside ten others.
The pair turned on each other in a public spat that divided their online supporters and saw vague allegations of misuse of donations, among other criticisms.
Thomas continued to film anti-migrant social media videos in his home but soon found a new group fixated on the small boat crisis. With their support, Thomas founded his latest venture: Patriot Platform.
It borrows heavily from existing groups in the hard and far right, including vetting supporters by phone to attempt to stop infiltrators.
Thomas refers to himself as the “founder” of the group and recorded himself preparing to launch this new movement, including flying to Belfast in the wake of the violent riots that took place after a Sudanese migrant was charged with attempted murder.
“What I’ve witnessed in Belfast has given me the inspiration to realise that when everyone gets involved who’s committed, a change can be made,” he said in one post. “We are going to produce a patriotic army of thousands and thousands of English and British men that are done with protesting, done with walking down roads, and want to make a difference.”
Thomas has not been quiet about his plans, including a stated intention to put “50 boats” in the English Channel and lock down the Port of Dover to stop migrants from entering the UK.
It is not clear if he attended the Dover march on Saturday, as he is understood to be banned from the area and is subject to an on-going court case with police.
But he was happy to be seen in Portsmouth, where he live streamed himself climbing over barbed wire fences to access prohibited areas and then stood knee deep in water while telling police he would “drown himself” if they touched him.
Thomas threatens to drown himself, later explaining that he believes this means police can not apprehend him in the water. (Photo: Youtube/Thomas)He ranted about crime linked to migrants in the UK, while breaking off to joke with the men who joined him and filmed one of them urinating where they stood in the sea. At one point, he explained his tactics to a police officer were linked to the plot of the movie “300”, in which Spartan warriors fight a massive invading Persian army by funnelling them into a small space.
While his YouTube stream was monetised, as is his X account, he makes a show of asking his supporters not to donate to him – although many do anyway.
One YouTube viewer sent him £10, and wrote: “Thanks Danny & Patriots. God bless you lad. Hero. Not even Tommy [Robinson] would do this.”
But Thomas’ sway is – for now – limited. His repeated pleas for boats to come and help rescue him and his friends seemingly surrounded by officers on the Portsmouth beach fell almost entirely on deaf ears until, just as they were about to give up, a lone woman on a single-person kayak arrived.
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