Tommy Robinson loses appeal against prison sentence

The far-right anti-Islam activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, has lost an appeal against his 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court.

Yaxley-Lennon was jailed last October after he ignored a court order not to repeat lies about a Syrian refugee, who had successfully sued him for libel.

The 42-year-old appealed against the sentence on Friday, with the Court of Appeal told his segregation from other inmates at HMP Woodhill was damaging to his mental health.

In a ruling on Wednesday morning, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, Lord Justice Edis and Lord Justice Warby dismissed the appeal.

"The judge's application of the law and his reasoning on the appropriate sanction in this case both exhibit a meticulous approach," they said.

Following the ruling, a spokesperson for the attorney general's office said Yaxley-Lennon's 18-month sentence "reflected how gravely the court considers contempt".

"We respect the court's decision to refuse permission to appeal the sentence imposed," they added.

The latest ruling marks Yaxley-Lennon's second court defeat in less than a month, after he lost a closely-related challenge to his segregation in jail in March.

Yaxley-Lennon, who is from Luton, was imprisoned after breaching a court order put in place after he lost a hugely expensive libel trial in 2021.

The former leader of the now-defunct English Defence League had wrongly claimed in an online video that a Syrian teenager was a violent thug.

He later repeated that false allegation, including during a rally at London's Trafalgar Square last year, and ultimately admitted 10 breaches of the court order.

The judge who jailed Yaxley-Lennon last October acknowledged it was likely he would need to be separated from other inmates for his own safety.

He is currently held on a closed wing at Woodhill in Milton Keynes, away from other prisoners, but has contact with staff and has access to a phone and laptop.

Baroness Carr said the court had carefully considered Yaxley-Lennon's complaints about his treatment in prison when coming to its decision.

"He says that he cannot now watch GB News. The DVDs that he has are limited. He is not given as much time for telephone calls as has been suggested and these are 'continually cut'," she wrote in the judgement.

But she said there was "no reasonable basis" to the argument that his conditions were "so substantially worse than the judge anticipated" at the time of sentencing that his sentence required cutting.

Yaxley-Lennon is due to be released on licence in July, at the halfway point of his sentence.