Tommy Robinson met with laughter as he fails to win EU parliament seat and loses £5,000 deposit

Former EDL leader finishes in eighth place after divisive campaign

Tommy Robinson was met with mocking laughter after he failed to win election last night as an independent MEP candidate.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, won just 38,908 votes (2.2 per cent) in his attempt to win a seat in the European parliament and finished in eighth place.

The former leader of the English Defence League was one of a group of MEP candidates who had a milkshake thrown over them during the election campaign, along with Nigel Farage and Ukip candidate Carl Benjamin.

He blamed government “interference” with social media companies for his failure to win a seat in the North West region.

“Trump won his campaign on social media. Brexit was won on social media. I’m banned from social media,” he told reporters at the count in Manchester.

“So my ability to fight a fair campaign is gone, orchestrated and organised by the government. I feel like I have been fighting with my hands tied behind my back,” he added.

Robinson was banned from Facebook and Instagram for repeatedly breaking the company’s hate speech policies and permanently banned from Twitter for breaking rules governing “hateful conduct”.

Anti-racism group Hope Not Hate celebrated his defeat and thanked “everyone who voted and took a stand against Robinson’s hateful and divisive rhetoric”.

Robinson’s 2.2 per cent share of the vote was so low he lost the £5,000 deposit he paid to stand in the election.

The Brexit Party won three of the eight seats in the North West region, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats taking two seats each and the Green Party taking the final seat.

Robinson was one of the high-profile candidates who failed to win a seat in the European parliament election.

Mr Benjamin, who is known on YouTube as “Sargon of Akkad”, failed to win a seat in the South West region and Ukip leader Gerard Batten lost his London seat.

Meanwhile, prominent anti-Brexit candidates such as Change UK’s Rachel Johnson and Labour’s Andrew Adonis were both unsuccessful in their bids to win seats in the South West.