Who is Tommy Robinson? The Karl Stefanovic guest who may have cost Australia’s famed TV host his job

The fallout was swift. Nine Entertainment, Australia’s largest locally owned media empire, is widely expected to sever ties with Stefanovic, and he will not appear on a radio show with Eddie McGuire on Friday. Robinson’s politics are well known in the UK and Europe, but he has a far lower profile here. So who is the man whose very presence in an interview may have cost Australia’s highest-paid TV personality his job? Who is Tommy Robinson? His legal name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. He took the name of Tommy Robinson from a Luton Town football hooligan to disguise his identity and previous convictions. The 43-year-old father of three is an anti-Islamic, far-right political activist, and has been a key figure behind actions like the “Unite the Kingdom” march in London last year. How did Tommy Robinson rise to prominence? Robinson moved into activism when he lost his job as an engineering apprentice after assaulting a police officer who tried to intervene to protect Robinson’s girlfriend, with whom Robinson was fighting in the street. He founded the avowedly Islamophobic English Defence League in 2009, which held rallies around the country. Robinson was convicted of assault again in 2011, for head-butting a man at a demonstration in Birmingham. Since leaving the EDL, Robinson has rebranded himself as an independent journalist, writing for the conspiracy theory-peddling outlet Rebel News. …