Bishop Ceirion Dewar rejects the Church of England as heretics. Instead, he gathers his flock under a gloomy sky on a beach in Cornwall.

More than 20 people answered the call he made on social media – one wears a T-shirt saying Jesus is King.

Another wears a Union Jack anorak with a T-shirt emblazoned “UTK” – Unite the Kingdom – the movement organised by anti-Islam campaigner Tommy Robinson.

Wearing a white robe over a wetsuit, Dewar strides down the beach and prepares for a mass baptism.

His voice booms out: “In the name of Jesus Christ, I gladly baptise you!”

Critics call Dewar “the far-right bishop” – a label he rejects.

But he does represent a new type of Christianity – more militant, more political – and one that is on the rise.

Several of those here came because they saw Dewar preaching fire and brimstone at Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom march on 13 September.

And they are ready to follow him into the cold waters of the Celtic Sea. One by one, he blesses them, then plunges them under the waves. Afterwards, they hug. Some are euphoric.

Fergus Worrall drove from Bristol with his girlfriend Louise French; both were baptised.

“I saw Ceirion’s speech at the Unite the Kingdom rally, and it was just epic,” Worrall says. “I mean, I just loved it.”

Worrall says he used to be “fairly lefty”. After trying Buddhism and New Age practices, he came to Christianity. But Dewar’s appeal is not just religious – online he decries immigration and the influence of Islam, a message that “chimed”.

“We are a Christian culture, a Christian nation. And I do feel like we have lost a lot of that.”

A month earlier, Dewar had addressed the 150,000-strong crowd at the Unite the Kingdom march in London, bishop’s crook in hand, his voice thundering out over Westminster: “God, you have not abandoned Britain!”

When he looked out, he saw not just British and English flags, but wooden crosses and depictions of Jesus.

It was not his first appearance with Robinson. The year before, he spoke at another rally in Whitehall and said: “This nation of ours is under attack! We are at war! We are at war not just with the Muslim, not just with wokeness.”

This is something new and growing – a movement that has long marched against immigration, against Islam, is now marching behind the cross.

I ask Dewar what for him, as a Christian, is the appeal of Robinson.

“It’s not the appeal of Tommy Robinson, per se,” he says. “It was the opportunity that he afforded to me to stand in front of that many people and to both pray for the people and this nation.”

Dewar was marching front and centre with Robinson. He may be borrowing an audience from Robinson, but he’s also effectively endorsing him, I suggest – and doing so in a bishop’s garb.

“I don’t think that at all. I’m very clear on what I endorse, and my political views are public and well-founded.

“My stand with Tommy is not necessarily political. It’s a man that has surrendered his life to Christ, and he’s on that journey of faith and trying as a good shepherd to help lead him in that and to shape that faith in a way that is beneficial to him.”

I ask him whether he truly thinks we are “at war” with the Muslim.

“Unfortunately, what I was trying to convey, having listened to an entire day’s worth of speeches, didn’t come across quite the way I’d hoped to have expressed it,” Dewar says.

“The problem for me is I understand we’re a multi-ethnic, multicultural, multi-faith Britain, but when you have so many elements that refuse to get into the great melding pot of multiculturalism, but remain outside and try and force that culture, force that religious system, force that legal system into an existing culture, then there’s always going to be problems.

“I would love to see more Christianity at the heart of our politics. I would like to see Christian principles once again driving our legal system.”

Many on the hard and far right agree with him – and increasingly link an anti-Islam agenda with a Christian identity. That also adds grandeur to grassroots street politics, elevating a culture war into a clash of civilisations.

UKIP, which has become more explicitly nationalist since the departure of Nigel Farage as party leader, says in its manifesto that it will “declare war on radical Islam and place Christianity back into the heart of government”.

Online, people call for a “holy war”. Katie Hopkins, the far-right commentator who also marched shoulder to shoulder with Robinson, said in a recent interview: “Certainly the time of the crusades will need to come again… We are overrun.”

One group organising online, with more than 50,000 followers, uses Christian imagery as part of its pledge to “hunt down Muslims”.

Dr Maria Power, author of The Church, the Far Right, and the Claim to Christianity, describes this as “Christian nationalism” and says it has a precedent in the UK, especially in Northern Ireland, where Britishness and Christianity were often equated.

“But really, I’ve seen it increase since we’ve seen the power of Christian nationalism in the states develop. You start to see inklings of it, probably about four or five years ago. Particular pastors talking this way, podcasts emerging, and content emerging on places like YouTube. And it’s very easy to fall down the rabbit hole of the algorithm, isn’t it?”

Ceirion Dewar rejects the term Christian nationalism, which he sees as specific to the United States, a country that has a different tradition of public, political Christianity. And it’s true that he and others have been advocating and preaching a more muscular Christianity since at least 2016 and the Brexit referendum.

One of his friends is Rikki Doolan, who belongs to the Spirit Embassy, a church in London with British-Zimbabwean origins. (A 2023 investigation by Al Jazeera accused Doolan and others in the church of being involved in money laundering, an accusation Doolan describes as “fake news and a false narrative”.)

It was Doolan who “converted” Tommy Robinson to Christianity three weeks before the latter left prison earlier this year. Doolan says it is “a new journey” for Robinson.

Doolan was also on stage at UTK. I ask him about some of the statements made there, including by a Belgian politician, that “Islam does not belong in Europe and Islam does not belong in the UK”. He says he disagrees with that “because it’s not realistic”. But “if we can’t fix the problem, then that makes more sense. But I would like to try and fix it first”.

Doolan and Dewar stand outside the established Church. But the majority of Christians in the UK still belong to the Church of England.

Dr Sam Wells is the vicar of St Martin’s-in-the-Field, a Church of England church on the corner of Trafalgar Square in London. He was holding an annual service commemorating victims of suicide when Robinson’s march came right up to the square, resulting in skirmishes with the police. Wells says his congregation was “hurt” by the Christian imagery on display.

“The gestures of the cross, the Christian symbols, are about love and understanding and peace and gentleness and they’re being thrust in people’s faces as weapons,” he says. “I think that’s very painful.”

Wells was one of the senior clergy leaders who signed an open letter denouncing Robinson’s march as a “corruption” of the Christian faith, saying the cross was being “co-opted” by the far right. Dewar in turn wrote his own letter denouncing the Anglican hierarchy for seeking “polite applause in editorial offices and political chambers”, calling on them to “repent”.

Dr Wells says Dewar’s letter is “very well expressed but I think it’s nonsense”.

“Christian values, what does that actually mean? I think it means love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness. An institution or a church or a preacher has a right to be called Christian if they look like Jesus. Those marches didn’t look like Jesus to me. They looked like the kind of people who were attacking Jesus in Holy Week.

“I think they’re reading a different Bible from the one I’m reading.”

If the talk is of winning, well there are very different battlegrounds.

The cloisters versus a Cornish beach.

Dewar has several mass baptisms planned across the country; so does Doolan.

This is not just about the extreme right using Christianity for their own ends; it’s just as much some Christians using the far right to reach new audiences.

A new Christian politics, in all sorts of ways and all sorts of places, is on the march.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

The worst offending areas for uninsured driving in the UK have been revealed – as a hit-and-run victim described how he was “left for dead” with catastrophic injuries.

Every 20 minutes, someone in the UK is hit by an uninsured or hit-and-run driver, the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) said, based on claims from over 26,000 victims each year.

Every day, at least one person is so seriously injured by an uninsured or hit-and-run driver that they need life-long care and every week, at least one person is killed by an uninsured driver, according to the bureau.

Thurrock in Essex is the worst offending area for uninsured driving, according to claim data from the MIB, a non-profit organisation created to protect people from the impact of uninsured and hit-and-run drivers.

Four different postal areas in Birmingham are among the 15 hotspots highlighted by the MIB, with areas in Peterborough, Manchester, Belfast and Havering also named due to housing a large number of defendants per 1,000 residents.

The 15 worst postal areas for uninsured driving
• 1. Thurrock (RM19)
• 2. Birmingham (B25)
• 3. Birmingham (B18)
• 4. Peterborough (PE1)
• 5. Sandwell (B66)
• 6. Havering (RM1)
• 7. Birmingham (B21)
• 8. Manchester (M18)
• 9. Birmingham (B35)
• 10. Belfast (BT17)
• 11. Epping Forest (IG7)
• 12. Belfast (BT13)
• 13. Buckinghamshire (HP18)
• 14. Bradford (BD7)
• 15. Luton (LU1)

One of the victims of an uninsured driver is cyclist Cahal O’Reilly, 55, who was five miles from the ferryport in Holyhead, Wales, when he was hit from behind in September 2021.

He was thrown on to the windscreen and 20m through the air until he landed on the side of the road, seriously injured.

The uninsured driver, who police estimate was driving at 70mph, fled the scene.

‘Left for dead’

“I was left for dead, bleeding to death on the side of the road,” Mr O’Reilly told Sky News.

“Nobody knows how long I was on the floor for. When I came to my senses, I could taste my own blood and feel the road on my cheek.”

He realised he was “pretty seriously injured” when he could not move his ankles, and lay still until help arrived.

A passing motorist, who initially thought Mr O’Reilly’s lifeless form was debris before realising it was a body, called the emergency services.

Mr O’Reilly was left with serious injuries, including a broken back and neck, shattered pelvis, smashed bone in his leg, and dislocated shoulder and required several surgeries in the days after the crash.

“I suffered a polytrauma, which is multiple horrendous injuries,” Mr O’Reilly said. “The police said if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet, I would be dead, and officers didn’t think I would make it.

“The hospital consultant told my wife that most people don’t survive the impact, the time until the ambulance arrives, and 22 hours of operations in 48 hours.”

Doctors had to use rods to reconnect Mr O’Reilly’s knee and ankle on his right leg, as the bottom of his foot “was just hanging on by skin and muscle”, and use an arterial skin graft from his left arm to help patch up the damage to his smashed leg.

Mr O’Reilly, who lives in Wandsworth, south London, also had to wear a neck brace for more than five months to stabilise his shattered neck and had to learn how to walk again, with serious setbacks on the way.

‘Challenging’ recovery

“My pelvis and back fused and healed very quickly, but my leg took the main force of initial impact, with bits of my leg tissue found in the headlight of the car,” Mr O’Reilly said.

Just when he started seeing some progress in the rehab for his leg, about 18 months after the crash, doctors discovered that the metal work supposed to hold the bones together was falling apart, causing a serious infection in his leg.

Mr O’Reilly required another surgery and was told that if the bone did not heal, his leg would have to be amputated.

Four years on from the horrifying crash, he was told that his bone had finally fused last month.

“If you walk past me in the street, you wouldn’t know now, but the process to get there was very difficult and psychologically quite challenging,” Mr O’Reilly said.

The former British Army major hopes he will be able to return to work as a business consultant next year.

Read more:
Victim criticises ‘appalling’ sentence for uninsured driver
Nurse describes ‘horrific’ fatal crash

He is now campaigning with the MIB to stop uninsured drivers from hitting the roads, as he wants “nobody to go through what I had to go through”.

“We have to do something in this country,” he said. “People are morally making a choice where they don’t care about their fellow citizens and fail to insure their car and make sure it is properly taxed. Something like that is a social responsibility.”

£1bn cost of uninsured drivers

Uninsured driving costs the government £1bn a year, including compensation for victims, emergency services, medical costs and loss of productivity.

An uninsured vehicle is seized every four minutes across the UK, with almost 120,000 seized so far this year, the MIB said.

The bureau has launched a week-long road safety initiative in collaboration with police forces across the UK, including targeted enforcement in problem areas and public education to urge people to check their insurance status.

“Our aim is to end uninsured driving, which means working closely with the police across the UK to remove dangerous vehicles from our roads,” Martin Saunders, head of enforcement at MIB, said.

“At the same time, we are ramping up our support for motorists who want to drive legally, providing them with the knowledge they need to have the right cover in place.”

A woman has died after being stabbed in the neck in Birmingham city centre on Friday night.

The 34-year-old, who has been named as Katie Fox, was taken to hospital after being stabbed on Smallbrook Queensway shortly before 9pm, but has since died, West Midlands Police have said.

Djeison Rafael, 21, appeared at Birmingham Magistrates Court on Monday morning, accused of murdering Ms Fox.

Rafael was told to be quiet and look forward as he interrupted the six-minute hearing multiple times.

The 21-year-old, of Rosedale Avenue in Smethwick, is also charged with two counts of causing actual bodily harm on 27 October and 7 November, possession of a Stanley blade on 7 November and assaulting a detention escort officer on 8 November.

The defendant was referred to crown court to enter his pleas as his offences were deemed too serious for the magistrates’ court.

District Judge John Bristow told the defendant: “I’m going to send you and your charges to the crown court on November 12.”

West Midlands Police said in a statement: “We are still keen to hear from anyone who knows more about what happened or the movements of Rafael, who we believe was wearing an all-grey tracksuit, black hat, trainers and rucksack on Friday evening (7 November).”

Read more from Sky News:
Worst areas for uninsured driving revealed
Ofsted launches new school report card system

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood on Saturday night thanked the police’s “swift action” to arrest a suspect and urged witnesses to call 101.

She wrote on X: “I am shocked to hear a woman was stabbed in Birmingham in an unprovoked attack.

“My thoughts are with the victim, her family and friends.”