TERRORISED BY THE LYNCH MOB
Faces contorted with hate, chanting ‘Nazi scum’, shoving a Trump supporter to the floor... so much for the moral high ground of the anti-Donald rabble!
DOUSED in milkshake by a mob chanting ‘Nazi scum’, a middleaged man is led away by police for his own protection. His crime – to express words of welcome for the President of the USA.
This was the scene beneath the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square yesterday just a couple of hundred yards from the room where Donald Trump and the Prime Minister were holding talks on the second day of the President’s state visit.
Outside, a smaller-than-expected ‘Stop Trump’ demonstration was not in the mood to hear dissenting voices. Moments earlier, the same man had been heard telling protesters that Mr Trump ‘speaks the truth’ about Brexit.
Oops. This did not go down well with a crowd who had just been wildly cheering Jeremy Corbyn as he accused Mr Trump of ‘Islamophobia’ for criticising the (Muslim) Mayor of London during Ramadan. There was similarly enthusiastic applause for Green Party MP Caroline Lucas as she attacked Britain for ‘pimping the Royal Family’ on Mr Trump’s behalf. The Scottish Nationalists’ Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, even accused Mr Trump of ‘betraying’ his Scottish ancestors with his policies on immigration.
Welcome to the dizzying heights of the moral high ground as this grand coalition of the righteous gathered yesterday to heap abuse on the leader of the free world.
In the event, however, it was all as underwhelming as the weather.
What had been grossly overhyped as a ‘carnival of resistance’ turned out to be a rain- soaked exercise in adolescent raspberry-blowing.
A 16ft schoolboy Trump sat astride a lavatory at one end of Whitehall while an inflatable nappy-wearing Trump barely got off the ground at the other. In between these two satirical masterpieces, a crowd – which had been forecast to exceed 250,000 but barely mustered five figures – heard a succession of Left-wing activists repeat the usual charge sheet against Mr Trump.
Some threw in a few choice expletives to raise a cheer and show how, like, really angry they were.
Many expressed their outrage that Mr Trump should be on friendly terms with Brexiteering villains like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.
Brexit, it transpired, was the reason why many of this lot had turned up yesterday. The blue andyellow army of shouty Remainer ultras haven’t had a good shriek outside Parliament for some months now. The presence of Brexit-loving Mr Trump was the perfect excuse for a reunion.
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry went as far as suggesting some sort of post-imperial intervention at the White House as she delivered a stern warning to Mr Trump: ‘We are not going to allow you to be the representative of the United States that we believe in!’ George III and his ministers tried something similar back in 1776, Emily, and that did not end well. But then there has always been something distinctly viceregal about Lady Nugee (to give Miss Thornberry her correct title).
How infuriating for her and the rest of the anti-Trump coalition that everything inside the rocketproof security cordon seemed to be going so well. Following on from Monday’s spectacular events at Buckingham Palace, the bilateral glow remained undimmed yesterday. Even Theresa May appeared to be having a lovely time. HERE on the outside, however, the atmosphere was sour and spiteful. Those politicians, including the leaders of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP plus the Speaker of the Commons – who had made a point of snubbing our most powerful ally, have been left looking naive and unprofessional.
None could produce a coherent explanation for their willingness to embrace non- democratic state visitors, such as the President of China, while ostracising the elected President of the USA.
The irony was not lost on the handful of pro-Trump supporters who had decided to make a stand in Parliament Square yesterday. Earlier on, I encountered the man who was later covered in milkshake. He was part of a group waving the Stars and Stripes. Given that he was also wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ Donald Trump baseball cap in the middle of a crowd like this, he and his group must have been expecting a reaction.
‘Love him or hate him, he’s our greatest ally and he’s here to commemorate D-Day so we should show some respect towards him,’ explained retired company director Lorraine Chapel, from west London. As she spoke, a group of EU flag-wavers, many in Liberal Democrat T-shirts, squared up to the group, calling them ‘fascists’.
‘F*** Trump. How dare you support him?’ shouted one of the antiTrumpers, a German academic called Daniella. ‘Don’t swear at me, please,’ countered Lorraine. Police were soon on the scene to calm things down.
Nearby, the team in charge of the ‘Baby Trump’ balloon were keeping their toy tethered close to the ground. They had been granted two hours of flying time by Mr Trump’s nemesis, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, but their