Ezra Levant arrives in London on February 19th to challenge UK’s Terrorism Act restrictions, including Tommy Robinson’s solitary confinement and denied visitor rights, while live-tweeting his hearing. Robinson faces charges for refusing to share a phone password tied to confidential legal matters, sparking debates over "lawfare" and prison safety amid Muslim gang threats. Levant highlights Catherine Burblesingh’s conservative school policies as a counterpoint to perceived free speech erosion, with Nigel Farage’s Reform Party leading polls despite Labour’s 16% approval and Keir Starmer’s controversial plan to send troops to Ukraine. The episode ties UK legal crackdowns to broader global threats against free expression, urging U.S. intervention and listener support for Rebel News. [Automatically generated summary]
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Tonight, the battle between freedom and tyranny in London, England.
It's February 19th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
Hi, everybody.
It's Ezra Levant.
I'm in London, England.
I'll be back in Canada tonight.
I'm here for a number of reasons.
My first reason was I was supposed to visit Tommy Robinson in prison, but that was banned.
His rights are being removed, including his rights to see visitors.
My second reason was to go to the ARC conference.
That's Jordan Peterson's amazing conference of freedom-minded people from the UK, America, Europe, and Canada, too.
And the third reason is to live tweet Tommy Robinson's hearing under the bogus charges under the Terrorism Act.
That's where I'm standing now.
I'm going to go into the court in a moment.
But let me show you some of what we've done over the last few days, including with our new British reporter, Sammy Woodhouse.
I mean, it's one thing to interview newsmakers, but I think we should also occasionally talk to people who have certain philosophy or a worldview of freedom.
And here's one, Sammy talking to Catherine Burblesing.
Who's she?
She's actually called Britain's strictest headmistress.
She runs a school that would be called challenging demographically, but through a combination of discipline and pro-Britain ideology, she's managed to unify the kids and make them into academic successes and patriots too.
Take a look at Sammy Woodhouse talking with Catherine Burblesingh.
You and your school are known to be quite controversial.
Why is that?
Well, we're super strict, so people don't necessarily like that, but I always say that strict means that you love them enough to keep your standards high for them.
I always say we teach the children small C conservative values, things like personal responsibility, having a duty towards other people.
You might sacrifice something that you want for yourself in order for the whole to benefit.
We also believe in our children being British, and we have a British flag outside and we sing God Save the King.
That is quite controversial because, you know, we're in the inner city, so it seems odd that we would sing God Save the King, but I think that our children are British just as much as any other white kid would be British, you know, and we should all be British together.
But those things are quite controversial in 2025.
It should be, but I know it is.
Now, I've worked in schools.
I'm also an activist and I go to schools and I try and educate them on criminal sexual exploitation.
I'm sure you've heard, especially over the last few months, how children have been getting gang raped throughout the country.
But they're also exploited into committing crimes.
Is this something that's ever been an issue at your school?
No, I mean, it wouldn't be.
I mean, as I say, we're very strict and so we're constantly warning the kids on not putting themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
So when they, at the end of the day, we get the kids on buses immediately so they can go immediately straight home.
We strongly encourage the families not to give their children smartphones so that they're not accessing the web.
In a more lax environment, that's when kids end up pursuing routes out there that are really quite horrifying.
And then parents don't know what's happening to their child.
And it's just awful.
And it's the kind of thing that I'm warning parents about all the time.
Sending Troops to Ukraine?00:07:37
So, no, we haven't found that sort of thing.
The UK is an interesting place now politically.
Nigel Farage's Reform Party only has five or six seats in Parliament, but it's leading the polls.
Trouble is, the official opposition, the Conservative Party, they don't want to go away.
Their leader is Kemi Badenock.
Can these two parties hash it out?
Well, when we landed here in the UK, one of the astonishing things we saw was Keir Starmer, the extremely unpopular Prime Minister.
By the way, his government approval, according to a new YouGov poll, is just 16%.
He was only elected last July.
I mean, that is Trudeau level, low numbers, but instead of 10 years, it's just not even, I mean, just six months, really, seven months.
Keir Starmer made an announcement.
It felt like he blurted it out.
In fact, he sort of said it reading off notes in rustling papers.
He's talking about sending British troops to Ukraine.
You take a look at the announcement, which was very weird.
He's talking about sending British boys off to war, standing around flipping through papers.
Take a look.
Good evening.
I want to thank President Macron for convening us this evening.
At stake is not just the future of Ukraine, it is an existential question for Europe as a whole and therefore vital for Britain's national interest.
This is a once-in-a-generation moment for the collective security of our continent.
Only a lasting peace in Ukraine that safeguards its sovereignty will deter Putin from further aggression in the future.
Now recent statements by the US administration should not come as a surprise.
President Trump has long expressed the wish for Europe to step up and meet the demands of its own security, that he wants to get a lasting peace agreement to end the war in Ukraine.
So today's informal meeting of European leaders was a vital first step in responding to that challenge.
On defence, it's clear the US is not going to leave NATO.
But we Europeans will have to do more.
The issue of burden sharing is not new, but it is now pressing.
And Europeans will have to step up, both in terms of spending and the capabilities that we provide.
On Ukraine, we're at the very early stage of the process.
Europe must play its role.
And I'm prepared to consider committing British forces on the ground alongside others if there is a lasting peace agreement.
I thought that was sort of astonishing.
To be candid, I didn't quite understand what the proposal was, but I had about a half an hour to kill in central London.
So I asked people what they thought about that plan.
Here's what some of them told me.
What do you think of sending troops to Ukraine?
Keir Starmer suggested it.
I'm from the U.S.
Oh, yeah?
Well, the British Prime Minister suggested sending soldiers to Ukraine.
Did you hear that?
Yes.
What do you think of that?
I mean, I don't like sending troops anywhere, but I think that Trump's policies are terrible and the EU needs to come together.
And I'd like to see the whole world come together for Ukraine.
Brilliant.
Why do you say that?
What do you think the troops should do over there?
You've got to get Russia out of Ukraine.
Simple as that.
No, I mean, that's fine.
No more needs to be said.
Okay, brilliant.
Peace.
No.
Can you expand on that?
Why is it a bad idea?
I don't think we should get involved.
They're not fun.
I think it's because of the fuel crisis, yes.
But maybe Trump's gone.
No.
To be honest with you, I think he's actually erased the fact they've left the Ukrainians out of the negotiations.
It just seems to be America and Russia again.
And we'll end up with another divided Europe and it'll all go up in the air.
Well, peace is a good idea because obviously people are not going out then, aren't they?
But war makes money, doesn't it?
That's the problem.
That's a good one.
I think Ukraine should be supported.
Sending troops in combat zones is politically difficult, but there's a point where you have to ask yourself, you know, where do we draw the line, really?
Because if we let Ukraine fall down, who's next?
What do you think of sending troops to Ukraine like Kirstarmer's proposed to do?
Mixed feelings.
If it ends the war, then fair enough, I think.
But it's got to be done in a sensible way.
You've got to do it so it's safer people, really.
It seems sort of like he blurted it out.
I'm sort of surprised by it.
How do you feel Keir Starmer's doing?
I mean, the polls show he's, do you think this was an attempt to switch the topic of conversation?
I'm just trying to understand it.
Obviously, the Labour Party in Kieran are not the most popular people in the country at the moment.
And so whilst we're worrying about what one hand's doing, the other hand's not being ignored.
So yeah, it could be an attempt to shift interest in what's going on.
It's been three years, so if it hasn't happened yet, is it going to happen now?
Yeah, if it's a top, boy, I have a lot to say about this.
You caught me off guard.
I didn't mean to.
I appreciate this.
No, I'd love to see.
I mean, it's just a new thing.
I mean, I think he caught a lot of Brits off guard.
Yeah, well, we should have known better in America.
I feel terrible that he's representing us.
Do you think British troops would help, or are they just?
I think it would at the moment.
It'd inflame the situation, but then if you go and there's a peacekeeping corps, then it would just be an amalgamation of all different armed forces.
So you need peace before you send in the peacekeepers, or you would never send them.
He's got to talk.
That's the problem, and no one's talked for three years.
It looks like the Americans are shifting from supporting the war to trying to force a peace.
But Kirst Starmer said, well, we're going to send some boots on the ground.
Is that realistic if the Americans aren't participating in the same way?
Well, if the UK is not alone and other countries like France and Germany join, it might be.
But I think overall it means that Europe, and I include the UK, need to think hard about how to defend itself.
Are you worried that that could escalate things?
Like, imagine if a British soldier shot a Russian soldier or vice versa.
That feels like it would take us closer to a larger war.
If you play poker, you know what bluff is.
Is Putin bluffing?
Or is Kirst Armor bluffing?
I find the whole thing terrifying.
It is, but we know from history that peace at all costs is way too high a cost.
Do you think they should be sent in to end the war or after the war is over?
I think after the war is over.
I think there has to be a decent settlement first and then after that.
Do you think other countries would join if the UK really did send troops?
Do you think France or Germany would join too?
It just seems like a radical idea.
Yeah, I agree.
It's pretty radical.
Who knows?
Prison Calls Canceled00:15:56
Really done.
Well, that's our show from London, England.
I'll be back in Toronto tonight.
On behalf of all of us at Rebel News in London or around the world, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
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Ezra Levant here for Rebel News.
It's a blustery winter's day.
I'm in London, England, standing outside the Westminster Magistrates Court.
What am I doing here?
Well, Tommy Robinson has yet another court hearing in the continuing war of lawfare against him.
Right now, as I speak, Tommy Robinson is rotting in prison at His Majesty's Prison, Wood Hill, a couple hours north of London.
I was actually scheduled to go visit Tommy on Sunday.
I have visited him before, as you know, but then I got a letter from the prison governor saying I was banned from visiting Tommy because they thought I might put something on my social media about it.
Well, and in truth, I probably would have, and that's my right to do so.
I would just simply report to people what I had seen in my visit with Tommy.
That's in the public interest because they're aggressing against Tommy in a number of ways that I'll describe in a moment.
But I wrote back to the prison governor and said, look, actually, I'm coming in my capacity as an old friend, as his former employer, and as someone who is trying to help with his legal matters and actually crowdfunding for his children.
As you may know, there's a trust fund for his children that we have crowdfunded for.
I also said to the prison governor that I would actually sign an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement, and I would give my personal undertaking not to talk about things.
I just really want to see him, see how he's doing, and I'm worried about him because he's been more than 100 days in solitary confinement and no man is meant to be.
I got no answer from the governor.
I remain banned from prison, not for anything that I've done, but and frankly, not even for anything that I would do, because I agreed that I would have a quiet visit with Tommy, even though it's Tommy's right to speak and my right to hear.
But what am I doing here today while Tommy is in prison?
He's in prison, as you know, for publishing a video in the public interest on Twitter, a video that has been seen more than 150 million times.
I don't know if you remember, but last week the U.S. Vice President JD Vance criticized Europe, especially the United Kingdom, for violating freedom of speech.
Here's a clip of that.
And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs.
A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes.
Not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.
Now, the officers were not moved.
Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person's decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility.
He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person.
But no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.
Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime.
Now, JD Vance didn't mention Tommy Robinson by name.
He mentioned other cases, but it's clear if you're talking about bullying people in the UK for free speech, Tommy Robinson is the most bullied, most arrested, most prosecuted man.
So while he languishes in solitary confinement in prison with very few visitors allowed, there's actually another hearing going on here, which is why we're here at the court today.
There is a draconian law in the United Kingdom called the Terrorism Act.
I would say the closest analogy to it is the U.S. Patriot Act.
And one of the provisions in the Terrorism Act is that police can arrest anyone, a British national or a foreigner, anytime you're going in or coming out of the UK.
So at any airport, any port, any international railway station, you can be arrested without any suspicion, without any search warrant.
They can just nab you and detain you for six hours.
Again, you don't have to be even under suspicion.
There doesn't have to be any probable cause.
There doesn't have to be a search warrant.
You can be held for six hours and much more than that.
You're compelled to answer any question.
You do not have the right to remain silent.
You have the right to bring in a lawyer, but all the lawyer will do is tell you that you do not have the right to remain silent.
And they ask you anything and you must answer.
They'll ask you about your politics.
They'll ask you about your religion.
They'll ask you about your political activism.
Or at least that's what they did to Tommy when they arrested him under this law a few months ago.
This law was designed not to grill people about their private lives or their personal matters.
It was designed, for example, if you caught a terrorist on the eve of some attack to compel that terrorist to answer questions about where the ticking time bomb was, something like that.
But it is being used and abused just to haul ordinary people off the streets and compel them to answer whatever questions these cops come up with.
But it's worse than that.
I mean, they can ask you anything and you have to answer, but they can also say, give us the passcode to your cell phone and other electronics.
And they have the right to rifle through every personal detail you have.
I mean, just think about what you have on your smartphone.
If you're like me, you have your email, you have your photos and videos, you have voice memos, you have email.
Of course, you have all your, you know, browser history of your phone call history, who you phoned, who you took a phone from, your text.
It's all in your phone.
That's your entire life.
And, you know, we have some confidence if we lose our phone, well, no one can get in it because of the password.
But under the Terrorism Act, you are compelled to give the government your password, no matter how sensitive things are on your phone.
And Tommy declined.
He said he answered questions for hours, but he said on his phone were confidential matters regarding rape victims who were afraid that if their information came to the knowledge of the police, they would be in trouble a number of ways.
I won't get into that now, but Tommy had real reasons.
He also, of course, has a lot of legal matters on his phone.
So he declined.
Well, here's the trick.
You can be scooped off the street for any reason or no reason.
You can be grilled for six hours with no right to remain silent.
And then you let go.
But if you don't answer a question, if you don't give them your phone password, then you're charged under the Terrorism Act.
Not for committing a terrorist act, but for not giving them the password.
Imagine that.
It's like a Catch-22.
It's a very Kafka-ass situation.
You didn't do anything wrong.
They arrested you without a warrant.
But because you wouldn't give them your secrets, now you're charged with terrorism.
And what could sound worse than being charged with an offense under the Terrorism Act?
It's truly astonishing.
So we're here today at the Westminster Magistrates Court because Tommy Robinson's lawyers are seeking more disclosure from the Crown.
So to fight the charge, Tommy has lawyers and they need what's called disclosure.
That's when the Crown prosecution gives Tommy whatever records they have, not just the ones that make him look bad, so to speak, but the ones that are exculpatory, the ones about their internal conversations, about their notes, about their instructions.
The Crown prosecutor has to give to Tommy any information that could be exculpatory.
Anyways, so I'm going to be in here today.
Tommy Robinson himself will not be present in court, but his lawyers will be.
And they're going to try and convince a judge to give Tommy more disclosure in the Terrorism Act offense.
I don't know if they'll be successful, but what do these things have in common?
Tommy being jailed and put in solitary confinement for publishing a Twitter video.
Tommy being prosecuted under a BS bogus charge under the Terrorism Act.
What's the common thread?
It's called lawfare.
The United Kingdom will do anything to silence Tommy, to shut him up, to hassle him, to stress him out.
And even worse, and here's what I mean.
I know that Tommy has been imprisoned several times before.
And if you know anything about prisons, and I know a tiny bit, many prisons are dangerous places because they're full of criminals.
And to be protected within prison, you have to join a kind of prison gang.
Now, in the United States, those gangs are often broken down by race.
There's a Latino gang.
There's a black gang.
Sometimes there's even a white supremacist gang.
And you join a gang for protection.
In the United Kingdom, by far the dominant gangs are the Muslim gangs.
In fact, many prisons, 30, 40, even 50% of prisoners are Muslim.
And many of them become Muslim in prison, converting to Islam to be protected by the gang.
Well, Tommy Robinson is a critic of Islam.
And anyone who could hurt Tommy, stab him, God forbid, even kill him, would immediately be considered a hero amongst the prison gangs.
So that's why the prison has put Tommy in solitary confinement, they say, for his own good, they say.
But of course, no man is meant to be in solitary confinement for more than 100 days, which is where Tommy is now.
But that's not all.
They've removed Tommy's telephone privileges.
The other day, the prison said he wasn't allowed to talk to his own son.
How bizarre is that?
They prepare Tommy's meals in a kitchen, but who are the cooks in the kitchen?
Other inmates.
So the meal marked for Tommy Robinson is made by these Islamic prison gangs.
He can't eat them.
So he needs to buy his food from the prison canteen.
But he's being punished and isn't allowed to do that either.
I already mentioned how prison visits are being canceled.
When you're in solitary confinement, a prison visit is not just a social occasion, it's a necessity for your mental health.
And they're canceling visit after visit after visit, usually after taunting Tommy by telling him that the visit is granted.
In my case, my visit was granted, then it was taken away.
Then I wrote my letter to the governor and they told Tommy, oh, they're reconsidering it.
And then they yanked that away from him.
They're playing mind games with him.
And he's only a third of the way through his sentence.
The British government is trying to kill Tommy Robinson.
The irony is that would make him a bigger martyr than ever.
But we're not interested in irony.
We're interested in saving his life.
And that's why Tommy has a group of lawyers that are trying to work this through.
It's not fast enough for my taste.
It's been over 100 days.
It's an outrage.
Frankly, if help is to come, I think it's really going to come in two ways.
One is street protests.
Tommy Robinson can muster thousands of protesters in the streets of London, even when he's in jail, to have a rally like one that was just a few weeks ago.
Maybe there needs to be a mass rally outside the prison to let the prison governor know that her torturing Tommy by denying him visits, by putting him in solitary confinement, by denying him food, by denying him phone call and his other rights are unacceptable.
But if I had to bet how this will really end, if it's to end positively, I would guess that it would be through an intervention from the United States.
Here's a clip again of JD Vance telling Europe how disappointed he is with them moving away from values like freedom of speech.
In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.
So I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer.
And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that.
The British government's dirty little secret is how it's treating Tommy Robinson.
But enough people in Donald Trump's circle know about that now, in part from the coverage on Rebel News.
I hope that one day, if not Donald Trump himself, perhaps JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will mention the case of Tommy Robinson.
Certainly, Elon Musk has many times.
And then the dirty secret of how the British government is punishing Tommy, torturing him, and committing law affair against him will become an international incident, an international diplomatic incident.
Tommy Robinson's Diplomatic Secret00:00:50
Maybe that will get the lad out of solitary.
We'll keep trying.
Anyways, I'm going to go into the court now.
I'm going to live tweet it.
You can follow that on my Twitter feed.
I know you'll be seeing this video after the tweeting is done.
But we're going to continue to follow this case because as the United Kingdom goes today, Canada might go tomorrow.
Thanks for tuning in to this podcast.
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