Smug Trump demonstration spits in the face of the national interest
Next week the Instagram-addled middle classes have the perfect chance to disguise mass entertainment as political radicalism - the Stop Trump demonstration
LAST summer, the crowds at Glastonbury Festival chanted “Oh Jeremy Corbyn”. It was the fashionable political statement of the summer.
This year, there was no Glastonbury and Britain’s Instagram-addled middle classes are eager for a substitute form of mass entertainment dressed up as radicalism.
How else do you stay cool and smug in this hot weather?
The answer, apparently, is to join the protests against Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, as he visits Britain a week today.
The “Stop Trump” campaign has been busy organising a “carnival of resistance”, and it looks as if they’ll put on one hell of a virtue show.
Perhaps the most ludicrous proposal is to have a specially made Trump Baby, a six-metre-tall inflatable blimp of the President wearing a nappy, floating high above him — a protest now signed off by London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Hundreds of thousands are expected to throng the streets of London. The idea is to humiliate Trump for being a right-wing bigot and to show, as the campaign website says, that “his rhetoric of hate and divisiveness isn’t accepted”.
It won’t work. It will cost the Government millions. The cost of protecting The Donald as he plays golf north of the border is meant to be £5million, so imagine the expense of policing central London.
Worse, it will be counterproductive. All the demonstration will really demonstrate is how very little our best-educated, most privileged citizens and young people think about their actions at all.
At its crudest, the anti-Trump demo might be thought of as punishment — an attempt to make a dent in the Trumpian ego. But Trump doesn’t really care.
And even if his pride is successfully wounded, then what? Will he see the error of his divisive ways?
The Stop Trumpers can’t be that thick. They must know that the President’s political success is in large part due to the apoplexy he induces in those who think he is “unacceptable”.
Next week, as the BBC shows endless footage of protesters filling central London, it’ll be worth remembering most Britons are saner than the Stop Trumpers. We can distinguish between the office of the presidency and the man himself.
We might not like him, but we see the need not to insult the Commander-in-Chief of our greatest ally.
Most citizens understand that post-Brexit we will need Trump on our side.
Still, maybe that’s the point: most Stop Trump celebrities — Lily Allen, Gary Lineker, Bianca Jagger et al — are ardent Remainers. They would probably rather not have the most powerful man on the planet in our Brexit corner.
Britain’s Stop Trumpers prefer to see themselves as part of a global coalition against right-wing populism, as well as partners of the anti-Trump resistance in the US.
They are right to think the many Americans who loathe Trump will appreciate their London protests.
But the Stop Trumpers ignore the even larger numbers of Americans who will, if they notice at all, see only a bunch of self-righteous limeys dissing their President.
To them, an anti-Trump carnival will only prove their President’s big foreign policy point: America’s Nato allies don’t respect their country. In the days leading up to the visit, Theresa May and Trump will be at the Nato summit in Brussels.
The PM and other leaders will be trying to persuade Trump to remain committed to the western alliance.
A huge Trump protest in London could undo any progress on that front, especially if the President is as capricious as his enemies claim.
Are all those celebrity anti-Trumpers really so sure they want to dismantle Nato?
The truth is that none of this much matters to the Stop Trump movement.
It’s just too boring to think of consequences when there is so much fun to be had.
Anti-Trumpism is about feelings more than politics.
Leo Murray, the activist behind the Trump Baby blimp, says he cried (not unlike a baby) on the morning President Trump was elected.
The French aren’t exactly Trump fans, but they understand better than us that diplomacy is about more than emotion. That’s why, while our Government was trying to figure out a way of inviting Trump without triggering mass protests, the then newly elected President Emmanuel Macron stole a march on Britain and rolled out the reddest of carpets for him.
The French barely complained. Britain would benefit from showing such tact, but recent history suggests there’s little chance of that.
We’ve quickly established ourselves as world leaders in anti-Trumpism. Six months before Trump had even won his party’s nomination in 2016, 40 of our elected representatives had already taken part in a parliamentary debate over whether or not Britain should ban him for his stance on Muslim immigration.
For all the anti-Trump grandstanding, his visit had to happen. America and Britain are great allies, however you look at it — we can’t just not invite the President of the US for four or eight years because people don’t like him.
But our Government remains cowed by the noisy Stop Trump coalition.
No 10 has labelled next week a “working visit” rather than a state one, and has been more eager than usual to keep the itinerary under wraps for fear that the protests will get out of control.
It’s no use pointing out the silliness of Britain’s “resistance”. Because Trump protesting isn’t really about Trump — it’s about telling the world that you aren’t a racist, sexist transgenderphobe like that man in the White House.
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Next year, Glasto will be back on and there will be plenty of Brexit-related issues to be glib about.
In 2018, though, demonstrating how much you hate Trump will show how much you love humanity, and sod the national interest.
- Freddy Gray is editor of the website Spectator USA, where appears.