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Outright
racist’ activist Daniel Thomas will face ‘full force of law’ over any crimes,
says home secretary
Shabana
Mahmood says she wants to distinguish between far-right extremism and
legitimate local concerns over asylum sites
Rajeev Syal Home affairs editor
Fri 18
Sep 2026 07.43 BST
Shabana
Mahmood has described the anti-asylum activist Daniel Thomas as “a far-right
and outright racist” who will feel “the full force of the law” if his
organisation commits crimes near contested asylum sites such as Piddington.
In an
interview with the Guardian, the home secretary also “wanted to reassure”
concerned villagers that asylum seekers due to move in to a neighbouring former
defence site would not “put pressure” on local resources because they would be
given “self-contained facilities”.
Her
intervention came after Thomas, a convicted criminal known as “Danny Tommo” and
the co-founder of the
Patriot Platform, said thousands of his masked followers could descend “for
days” on to the Oxfordshire village to prevent male asylum seekers being moved
in.
At the
launch of a crackdown on knife crime in Birmingham on Thursday,
Mahmood said she wanted to distinguish between legitimate concerns felt by
Piddington residents over a large-scale asylum centre and extremists who were
“hijacking” community concerns.
“I
understand the anxiety of local people when they’re about to see a change to
their community. But it is important to distinguish that anxiety, where
reasonable people can have a conversation, and the far right and outright
racists like Danny Thomas walking into town, hijacking an issue and then using
that to divide our communities,” she said.
“Their
behaviour is completely unacceptable. And where they break the law, they will
face the full force of the law.”
Residents
of Piddington, Oxfordshire, voted overwhelmingly to become an independent state
in a symbolic ‘referendum’. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA
Piddington’s
local population registered
their opposition to the proposed asylum facility on Wednesday, casting 285
votes against 26 in a symbolic ballot to leave the UK and seek
self-determination.
The
parish has been approached by hundreds of other town and village councillors
and residents for advice on replicating the campaign, which was backed by the
Conservatives, Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats.
Thomas
visited Piddington the day after the vote. He was dressed in a grey suit and
white shirt and was not accompanied by people wearing balaclavas.
Joe
Marshall, a parish councillor, said it was a private visit and Thomas was due
to be given a tour of the village and a cup of tea by a resident.
“It is a
closed meeting. We will engage with them and walk them around the village and
have a cup of tea,” he said. “We have also had an open invitation to Reform,
Labour, Conservatives and Restore to visit.”
Marshall
said it was not clear that villagers would want security assistance from men in
balaclavas, if it were offered.
Piddington,
Oxfordshire; MoD Bicester, the proposed site for the asylum camp, can be seen
in the background. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA
Thomas
visited the village hall briefly and later visited the entrance to the Ministry
of Justice camp where the asylum seekers are scheduled to be housed. In an
interview broadcast on YouTube with Dan Wootton, he said he had spoken to three
residents.
“The
people we are meeting are just normal mothers, normal grandmothers, normal
men,” Thomas said. “We have to start somewhere. Right now there are no men in
that camp. We are going to put a legal, lawful plan in place to help this
community in a way that has never been done before.”
Asked how
she would respond to Piddington residents after the vote, Mahmood said: “I want
to reassure the residents of Piddington that actually our experience from other
large sites where we already have, asylum seekers accommodated, whether that’s
in Wethersfield
or Crowborough,
is that putting all facilities on to one site is actually the best way to
manage pressures for local communities.
“Our
experience of other large sites where we are housing asylum seekers is that
we’re able to put on that site more of the facilities that asylum seekers need.
It’s a relatively self-contained facility, and the knock-on pressure to those
local areas, I don’t think we’re going to see.”
Mahmood
said she understood the anxiety of people in the countryside towards large
groups of asylum seekers, but she pointed out that many people in inner-city
areas such as her Birmingham constituency had similar concerns.
“I do
understand the anxiety that people feel, when they’re about to see a change in
their community or they are reading misinformation on the internet, or when
they’re just concerned that a village is about to have a facility nearby that
maybe they think may pose them some challenges,” she said.
“I also
hear that concern from communities such as mine, where there are large numbers
of HMOs [houses of multiple occupation] and accommodation in which asylum
seekers are held as well. There is concern across every type of community. Not
just in the countryside or in those sorts of areas, but in inner-city areas as
well.”
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