Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The ‘Stop Trump’ blimps

Foreign relations are about more than emotions

Last summer, the crowds in the fields at Glastonbury Festival filmed themselves chanting ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’. It was the fashionable political statement of the summer. This year, there’s no Glastonbury — those fields lie fallow — and Corbyn-mania suddenly feels very 2017. 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 J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, as he visits Britain next week. Britain’s ‘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 as an infant wearing a nappy, to float high and huge above him.

It’s hilarious, and if you don’t laugh you must be a fascist. ‘Taking the piss is one of the few areas where Britain still leads the world,’ says Leo Murray, the activist behind the prank.

Hundreds of thousands are expected to throng the streets of London next Friday. 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 here’.

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 £5 million, 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 actually 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.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in