Andrew Tate: the British deep state’s last chance?

A mixed-race, half-English, Muslim convert ticks a lot of boxes for an alternative universe British unity figurehead

Andrew Tate is quite a strange figure in many respects. He was the central cause of nothing less than a moral panic within respectable middle class English society (which, due to England being such a Main Character, has reverberated throughout the world). This panic was part of the ‘incel’ discourse which bubbled up in the late ’10s and expressed a certain generational horror that boys were getting information and entertainment from the internet, the zenith of which was arguably the release of the television series Adolescence in early 2025. This show portrayed a young boy falling under the influence of ‘incel’ influencers and eventually murdering his female classmate. Adolescence was soon declared mandatory viewing by no less than the Prime Minister himself, as everyone — young and old — watching it would somehow prevent an epidemic of femicide perpetrated by Andrew Tate superfans. It took no less than Kemi Badenoch to push back against this, declining to watch the show on the reasonable basis that ‘…the Prime Minister should not be building policy on fiction.’

Yet despite his status as a regime bogeyman, it is clear that Tate ticks a lot of boxes for a certain type of state actor in twenty-first century Britain. He is mixed-race, half-English, and Muslim. Being a convert, he is a rare example of a Muslim who isn’t a mere tribal minion living under the thumb of various Aunties. He has, furthermore, gone on the record to express support for a certain Englishness, and his (to an extent perfectly genuine) sentimentalism for England is of the kind that the likes of ‘Dilly Hussein’ and ‘Mohammed Hijab’ could never even pretend to affect. Tate therefore exists in an ambiguous space and, in a period of growing hostility between two groups, this can be useful. He is, in other words, a kind of alternative universe British unity figurehead, in which a certain ethno-cultural ambiguity can be reconciled into a single, grounded, mixed-identity, ‘rooted’ working-class figure.

One thing I notice about British state actors and state-aligned NGOs is that they prefer to ‘pivot’ popular people that they don’t like. Indeed, the archetype for what the British state prefers is the ‘deradicalised extremist’. Britain has institutional form here. Programmes like Prevent, overseen by the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (a branch of the police), were designed around the idea that extremism is best countered by so-called ‘credible messengers’ who can speak ‘with authenticity’ to ‘at-risk groups’. The Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), established in 2007 and expanding rapidly under David Cameron, but building upon previous institutional precedents, has quietly contracted private marketing agencies, community leaders, and online influencers to deliver government-approved narratives under the guise of grassroots voices.

Look at an organisation like Quilliam, founded by the British-Pakistani Maajid Nawaz after his own break with Hizb ut-Tahrir (a pan-Islamic extremist organisation banned in Britain, Russia, China, Pakistan, Turkey, Germany, and most of the Arab world). Quilliam received substantial Home Office funding in its early years, and was publicly championed as the model of state-backed deradicalisation. Nawaz himself was presented as a flagship ‘repurposed’ figure, until he was quietly disavowed when he began expressing heterodox views on Covid, which coincided with a collapse in funding and Quilliam being wound down.

As a previous Pimlico Journal article will have reminded regular readers, Tommy Robinson was also briefly entwined with the Quilliam network in 2013 and 2014, just as the Prevent agenda was grasping for a new target in the form of right-wing extremism after the first phase of the War on Terror had cooled somewhat, but before the second phase went into full swing following the Islamic State’s declaration of a caliphate and the spate of Islamic terror attacks that followed in Europe in 2015 and 2016. We can assume from this timeline that the donor money for counter-extremism focusing on Islamic extremism had dried up considerably, and this was a new avenue to obtain funds. Robinson’s brief dalliance with Quilliam saw him seemingly renounce his far-right extremist past (his famous Oxford Union speech dates from this period), before he did the hokey-cokey back into the arms of radical Zionists such as David Horowitz, claiming that he had been paid by Quilliam in return for his association with them in the process. The British state probably realised that he was a lost cause at this point and gave up on co-opting him (though there has still occasionally been suspicious behaviour from Robinson in the years since).

Tate is also, of course, from Luton: the same town as Tommy Robinson, and for many years now a byword for racial division in England. Some have even speculated that Tate witnessing grooming gang activity in Luton, in which English girls from broken homes were plied with drink and drugs from Muslim ‘Romeos’, in turn inspired his own pimping activities.

The British state trying to ‘pivot’ Tate would of course be potentially messy and fraught with risk. He has so far proven stalwart in his opposition to ‘The Matrix’. That said, state-aligned actors could try some mix of carrot and stick, and indeed some of his utility might be in him not renouncing his views (at least not entirely).

Clearly, Tate isn’t the talking point that he was a few years ago, or even earlier this year. To a teenager, for whom the horizon of secondary school seems like an eternity, he may indeed be old news. But what is clear is that there is a large category of those who might be broadly defined as ‘younger men’ with whom he has some brand recognition. While many on the Online Right will emphasise that Tate’s fans are disproportionately ethnic minority (contrary to the portrayal of most of the mainstream media, including Adolescence), and this is indeed probably true, this can also definitely be exaggerated: he clearly has many white fans in Britain as well, as many readers with younger brothers can attest. Tate is, in fact, a relatively ‘cross-cutting’ figure by the increasingly fragmented standards of British civil society, at least amongst men of a certain age. Helpfully, Andrew Tate’s brother, the somewhat more white-coded Tristan, has supposedly converted to Christianity, ticking even more boxes for the British state if both brothers decide to get involved (as they surely would).

Andrew Tate is also in serious legal trouble. In Romania, he was arrested in December 2022 and later indicted on various charges related to human trafficking, rape, and running an organised criminal group. In Britain, prosecutors authorised twenty-one similar criminal charges in May 2025. Florida’s Attorney General launched a criminal investigation into him upon his arrival there in early 2025, though no formal charges have yet been filed. He is also subject to UK civil proceedings over alleged rape and coercive control, and a separate tax-evasion-related civil case concerning some £21 million in revenues from his online businesses, with over £2 million of assets already seized. The British proceedings have been put on ice, with the courts confirming that they will only pursue prosecution once the Romanian case has run its course. In effect, the UK’s extradition request has been approved but deferred, meaning the Crown Prosecution Service must wait for a decision in Bucharest before bringing Tate to trial in London.

These international legal troubles mean that Tate needs all the help he can get. Whether or not you believe the charges against him are well-founded, he is now in a weak position in which the British state has lots of leverage over him. He does not have a ‘strong hand’, and these issues will cast a serious shadow over him for the foreseeable future, even if the Romanian case falls apart for procedural reasons.

Which brings me to the heart of my main, if somewhat speculative, argument.

Imagine the current unrest over migrant hotels doesn’t stop. Indeed, imagine it gets worse. Imagine another riot wave sweeping up over England, bigger than anything we’ve seen in the last decade or more. This sees serious inter-ethnic violence, in many situations pitting English against Muslims. Imagine a situation where state authority is being seriously called into question in various parts of the country. The deep state is going to try anything it can to stop this situation escalating. They will be willing to entertain things that are currently entirely beyond the pale.

What if some senior figures in the British state decided to make a deal with Tate: You work with us to stop these riots, and we will do everything we can to pressure Romania to drop their case against you, and everything we can at home to do the same as well, or at the very least to secure an early release or reduced sentence for anything you might be convicted of. Grimly, just as the Romanian government only seriously turned against Tate when Western Europe did, they would probably turn around again if asked to, especially in this specific context (procedural failings would also provide a convenient excuse for this on the Romanian side, and his return to Britain would also get him out of their hair, which is mostly what they want).

How would Tate be deployed? This might simply involve getting him to speak out against the riots, in a way that sees state funds allocated to promote it (e.g., through paying influencers) and is properly promoted and briefed using state resources (e.g., Home Office press offices informing broadcast networks and newspapers about Tate’s statements). I would imagine a speech going something like this:

This is messed up, bro. I remember, when I was a boy, in Luton. I saw some things. It was tough. But it was a better time. There was no issue with the Muslim bros drinking alcohol, they weren’t fanatics yet. No matter what race you were, the men had hard work in proper jobs. We were all hustling. We all played football together, we played whites versus browns at school, but it was all good, there were no hard feelings.

I am half-black, half-white, and Muslim. I grew up with it all. This is the England I know. And I gotta say that we need to treat each other with respect. Stop letting The Matrix divide us, with their Wars. And you know, I’ve gotta make a special shout-out to the English, and say I love you guys. I love England. You’ve got to make more babies, but I really hope you do, because I like English people.

In other words, the solution here sees Tate astroturfed as some kind of community leader figurehead, with the riots (and attendant anti-state violence committed on both sides) reframed as a ‘mob’ of ‘bad wronguns’ rather than racial warfare. Tate would be positioned as the voice of Common Sense Britain, with significant support from both sides of the conflict, especially the sort of people who, despite not being strongly ideologically rooted, might be tempted into race rioting or (especially) Muslim counter-vigilantism if there was a general breakdown of public order. A kind of ‘dark’ Sunder Katwala type, fit for a thoroughly ‘vibe-shifted’ era. Tate might also be dangled about as a kind of controlled systemic opposition, perhaps with his ‘Bruv Party’ (which is already registered) allowed to exist as a new anti-establishment force in the mould of Italy’s Five Star Movement, with Tate himself running in Luton in 2029, before inevitably fizzling out harmlessly under the weight of its own contradictions.

There are plenty of reasons to be sceptical of whether any of this would work, even if it were attempted. Indeed, it might grossly backfire. But it makes a certain intuitive sense for the deep state, backed into a corner, to attempt a strategy like this, because it accords with a certain way with which these people view the world, and a certain playbook which we have seen deployed time and time again in an attempt to neuter political radicalism in Britain. This ranges from the blatant shenanigans of the 55 year-old ‘retired’ police constable turned unlikely ‘football hooligan’ being conveniently ‘rescued’ by the BLM ‘personal trainer’ who spoke of ‘assessing the situation’ and ‘forming a cordon’ (very normal language for a mere personal trainer to use), to the more recent episode of the fat ‘bosh’ man trying to pivot the debate about ‘flagging’ into the need for ‘more flags on public buildings’.

Whatever happens, we will no doubt see some rather strange things in the months and years to come.

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This article was written an anonymous Pimlico Journal contributor. Have a pitch? Send it to pimlicojournal@substack.com.

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