Extract from The Guardian
Baby blimp flies high as Jeremy Corbyn and Nick Clegg join those opposing president’s trip
The moment Trump baby blimp lifts off - video
Tens of thousands of people poured through the centres of London,
Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast on Friday, united in their rejection of
the visit to Britain of the US president, Donald Trump, who admitted the protests had made him feel unwelcome.
There was a carnival atmosphere with music, dancing, the bashing of pots and pans and a forest of often witty, sometimes crude placards. The tone was set in London by a four-metre-high orange Trump baby blimp that was floated above Parliament Square, and placards with slogans such as “No Fan of Fake Tan Man”, “How Dare You Combover here” and “Free Melania”. But there was anger too at what many perceived as Trump’s racism, misogyny and climate change policy.
The former deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and the current and former Labour leaders Jeremy Corbyn and Ed Miliband joined the protesters in the capital who numbered more than 100,000, according to the organisers of two marches that converged on Trafalgar Square.
There was a carnival atmosphere with music, dancing, the bashing of pots and pans and a forest of often witty, sometimes crude placards. The tone was set in London by a four-metre-high orange Trump baby blimp that was floated above Parliament Square, and placards with slogans such as “No Fan of Fake Tan Man”, “How Dare You Combover here” and “Free Melania”. But there was anger too at what many perceived as Trump’s racism, misogyny and climate change policy.
The former deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and the current and former Labour leaders Jeremy Corbyn and Ed Miliband joined the protesters in the capital who numbered more than 100,000, according to the organisers of two marches that converged on Trafalgar Square.
Corbyn attacked the US president for his comments on Thursday that Boris Johnson would “make a great prime minister”, saying it was “not his business who the British prime minister is”.
Addressing a packed square, Corbyn said: “We are asserting our rights to democracy, our rights to freedom of speech and our rights to want a world that is not divided by misogyny, racism and hate.”
Suggested press conference words “He and I do disagree on some things: his tearing of babies from their parents, his racist attacks on the London mayor, his lies, his admiration for dictators, and I tend to think his combover is an absurdity.”
In Soho in London, a group of house music DJs including A Guy Called Gerald performed on a giant sound system under the banner “No to Brexit, no to Trump, no to Theresa May”. The actor Laura Carmichael, who played Lady Edith Crawley in Downton Abbey, held an “End Violence Against Women” banner.
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside City Hall in Belfast and thousands gathered at George Square in Glasgow.
Among them were Roberta Logan, 32, and her sons Magnus, six, and Aidan, three. “It felt important to bring them today to teach them to stand up against things that are wrong,” Logan said.
Trump did not come close to the protests himself, as he had a working lunch at Chequers with Theresa May and tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle, before a weekend of golf at two courses he owns in Scotland. Ahead of the UK visit, he said: “I guess when they put out blimps to make me feel unwelcome, no reason for me to go to London”.
Several protesters seemed worried about the Queen’s safety with the US president in Windsor, holding placards urging Trump not to grope her. Another implored her to “feed him to the corgis”.
“KEEP YOUR TINY HANDS OFF OUR QUEEN” #TrumpBabyBlimp #TrumpUKVisit
“Trump is just a vile, vile man so I felt really motivated to come here,” she said. “I think it is really important that so many people are here so that he knows how Britain feels and how women feel about him. He is such a loser.”
At Oxford Circus in London, James O’Brien from Ireland was selling Donald Trump toilet paper, calling out: “The most satisfaction you can have in a toilet, kids.”
Anne Howard said she thought protester numbers had been bolstered by Trump’s “insulting behaviour” to Theresa May in his interview with the Sun published on Friday.
“To come to someone else’s country and be so unbelievably rude is unacceptable,” she said. “He was so patronising – ‘I told her how to do Brexit but she didn’t listen’ – like she is some little woman and not the prime minister. It sounds like so many men I’ve met in my life.”
Sam and Jemima Queen were marching with their seven-month-old son, Sidney. “We are marching for our children’s future and for the children Trump is separating from their parents,” said Jemima.
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