Donald trump's Visitation

Sometimes you have to feel really sorry for the people of England. There they were, depressed and hungover, out of the World Cup, home to what’s quite possibly the world’s most dysfunctional government, heading out of the EU despite voting heavily to remain and without even the prospect of an independence referendum to offer a modicum of hope. You wouldn’t think that it could possibly get any worse, and then Donald Trump comes to visit.

Football didn’t come home, but Donald Trump did, and incredibly the British government managed to find someone who hadn’t resigned to go and greet him. It was Liam Fox (or to give him his proper title, the Disgraced Former Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox) who turned up to greet The Donald when he came down to earth at Stansted airport.  Somehow, it was quite appropriate that the British Government met the world’s leading serial fantasist with a serial fantasist of its own.

The US Embassy has issued some ridiculous scaremongering advice to American citizens to hide away for the duration of The Donald's visit. But we all know the difference between Americans in general and Donald Trump in particular. Americans have nothing to fear in the UK. We welcome everyone to our country who isn’t an orange coloured bigot who gropes women, lies and separates children from their parents in order to score some cheap political points.

Some have questioned the point of protesting against Trump, because it’s not like seeing a protest in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, or anywhere else is likely to make him change his mind. However, changing Trump’s mind is not what these protests are about. Everyone attending knows that they have as much chance of changing Trump’s mind about his misogyny, his racism and his undermining of democracy, as they do of changing Mother Theresa’s mind by calling her a Maybot. The reason for protesting against Trump’s visit is because if you don’t protest, if you’re not vocal about your feelings, then those in power take your silence as consent. Silence is complicity.

Anyway, Trump’s mind might not be capable of being changed. Changing your mind means having the capacity to distinguish between fact and fiction and, as far as Trump is concerned, the truth is whatever was the most recent thing to come out of his mouth. When dealing with a narcissist like Trump, it’s impossible to engage with him using logic and reason because he is not motivated by logic or reason. The only thing that motivates Trump is his own extremely bigly and extremely thin skinned ego. He said ,just before arriving in the UK, that he thinks that people in Britain like him. That’s all the more reason to show him that we don't. We reject his politics of hatred and division.

There are also those who say that it’s hypocritical to protest against Trump, but not to show the same degree of anger against the likes of Erdogan of Turkey or other human rights violators who visit the UK. And ,to be fair, there are a lot of human rights violators who are invited to the UK by the British Government. The British Government’s idea of international diplomacy is to calculate how many weapons it can sell, and it’s not too fussed about those weapons being used against innocent people. However the difference is that Erdogan or some random Middle Eastern dictator doesn’t strut the world stage posing as the “leader of the Free World”. The reason that there are more protests against Trump is that higher standards are expected of a democracy and even higher standards are expected of the world’s most powerful democracy. If you claim to be the leader of the Free World then the Free World is going to hold you to account. In the Free World, if its leaders are not accountable, then the term Free World has no meaning at all. We protest against Trump precisely because the USA is the world’s most powerful democracy. If President of the USA trashes democratic values and undermines the social and political order in other democracies, as Trump does, then that poses a direct and immediate danger to the UK, and the rest of Europe that the likes of Erdogan doesn’t. Protesting against Trump isn’t about signalling our virtue. It's more than that: it’s self-interest and it’s self-defence.

Protesting against Trump’s visit is also a protest against a British government which is spitting in the face of the UK’s European partners in order to prostitute the UK to a racist buffoon who cages children and separates toddlers from their parents. We protest against Trump because we have a British government which likewise demonises migrants and separates families due to racist and unjust immigration laws. We protest against Trump because the British Government is taking the UK out of the EU in order to transform the UK into a cut-rate version of Trump’s America. We protest against Trump because we don’t want Trump’s America here.

As a nation, we may be divided on the constitutional question, divided on the political parties we support and the football teams we cheer for, but let’s show that we are united in our condemnation of the vile politics of Donald Trump. I salute those who are taking to the streets. I wish I could join you.