As he arrives back in the UK after being deported from the US by the Trump administration, the far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos may be wondering what lies ahead for him in his native country. The “alt-right” agitator, 41, made his name in the US by promoting Donald Trump and associating with his allies before the 2016 election. But now the Trump administration has unceremoniously dumped the former Breitbart News editor back in the UK after he allegedly overstayed his visa.
He has also made plenty of disparaging comments about the president, including that he is “firmly off the Trump train”. Those in the rightwing ecosystem in the UK say Yiannopoulos is now too extreme to find a prominent berth back home. The commentator started his career at the Daily Telegraph, where he wrote a controversial blog until 2011, when he started his own website, the Kernel.
In 2014 he started working for the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon at Breitbart News, before moving to the US and promoting far-right causes. He left Breitbart after a controversy over a video in which he appeared to condone sexual relations with boys as young as 13. He later said “sloppy editing” and his “British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humour” had created the wrong impression and denied endorsing paedophilia.
Since he left the UK, GB News has become the ascendant broadcast outlet of the right, but he is unlikely to find a place there. A source at the channel said: “We wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole, not in a million years. GBN had a few odd people to start with and we’ve got rid of them.” Of the provocative positions that brought him notoriety in the US, the GB News source said: “He won’t make much money out of it here, he appeals entirely to an American audience.
It’s a bigger country and you have a bigger pool of fruit loops.” There is a growing subsection of rightwing provocateurs in the UK who have been deemed too controversial for the main channels but have established niche brands of their own. The journalist Dan Wootton was suspended from GB News after a guest on his show made sexually inappropriate comments about a female journalist, and after leaving he now has his own channel. The former TalkTV host Mike Graham has also set up his own independent show.
He was sacked after the company said he had failed to cooperate with an investigation into a racist post that appeared on one of his social media accounts. Graham said the racist comment had been the result of his account being hacked. It is understood that Reform UK will not accept him into its ranks.
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