June 3, 2019:

With the city of London effectively on “lockdown” in anticipation of the protests—complete with the now-famous Trump Baby Blimp—that are expected to flood the city’s streets on Tuesday (June 4), US President Donald Trump touched down in the United Kingdom on Monday, June 3, for his first state visit shortly after tweeting an attack on London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

“Sadiq Khan, who by all accounts has done a terrible job as Mayor of London, has been foolishly ‘nasty’ to the visiting President of the United States, by far the most important ally of the United Kingdom,” Trump tweeted just before landing at the Stansted Airport in London on Monday. “He is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London, not me.”

Trump’s attack on Khan came after the London mayor—who granted permission for protestors to fly the Trump baby blimp during Tuesday’s mass demonstrations—accused the US president of behaving like “the fascists of the 20th century to garner support” and said he would join the UK Labour Party in boycotting the state visit.

“Donald Trump is just one of the most egregious examples of a growing global threat,” Khan wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian on June 1. “The far-right is on the rise around the world, threatening our hard-won rights and freedoms and the values that have defined our liberal, democratic societies for more than seventy years.”

Khan’s view of Trump as the face of a global far-right movement was echoed by the organisers of Tuesday’s demonstrations, which are expected to bring hundreds of thousands of people into the streets across the UK.

Anna Vickerstaff, part of the team of demonstrators that will be “babysitting” the Trump blimp on Tuesday, said the protests against the US president are about far more than displaying a silly balloon designed to humiliate Trump.

“We know Trump isn’t a joke—he is responsible for rampant xenophobia, sexism, and transphobia and the creeping rise of far-right politics,” Vickerstaff wrote in an op-ed for The Independent on Monday. “His climate denial and persistent facilitation of the fossil fuel industry is a death sentence for communities in the global south. But if flying a balloon caricature is what gets under his skin—then that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

“Our balloon,” wrote Vickerstaff, “is part of a proud history of political satire in the UK that sends a clear, orange, message to Trump and his politics of hate that they are not welcome here.”

According to the UK-based Metro, a “huge police and security operation” is in place as London authorities prepare for the mass protests against the US president’s three-day state visit.

In addition to the Trump baby blimp, the Metro reported, a “16ft talking robot of Mr. Trump sitting on a gold toilet is also expected to make an appearance. It depicts the American leader with his trousers round his ankles while tweeting and says some of his well-known phrases such as ‘stable genius’ and ‘no collusion’, as well as breaking wind.”

Ahead of Trump’s arrival in the UK, The Guardian expressed the view of many Britons when it declared in an editorial on Sunday that “the president is not welcome.”

“Mr. Trump is a demagogue who represents a threat to peace, democracy, and the climate of our planet,” the newspaper said. “As elected leader of the UK’s closest ally, he can’t be ignored. But making him, his wife, and four adult children the honored guests of the Queen risks legitimising his destructive policies, his cronyism, and his leanings towards autocracy.”

June 4, 2019:

Protesting both the individual cruelty of US President Donald Trump and the globally ascendant “politics of hate” he represents, tens of thousands took to the streets in London and across the UK on Tuesday as Trump enjoys “royal treatment” from the British government on his first official state visit.

Trump claimed in a tweet on Monday that he had not “seen any protests yet”, but the demonstrations on Tuesday will be impossible to miss, with the 20-foot-tall Trump baby blimp flying over London and crowds of Britons pouring into the streets throughout the country.

“We are here to take on misogyny, racism, fascism and hatred,” Guardian columnist Owen Jones declared during a speech in London.

Jones emphasised this point in a column ahead of Tuesday’s mass demonstrations, noting that the protests “aren’t just about Trump, they’re about everything he stands for.”

“These protests won’t simply be about Trump and the perverse reality TV show he’s treated the world to,” Jones wrote. “The protests will be about Trumpism: about confronting a resurgent global far right, defending the rights of women and minorities, fighting the climate emergency, opposing the threat of war, and standing against an attempt to gut the NHS and trash hard-won rights and freedoms.”

Journalist Shaista Aziz echoed Jones, telling the crowd gathered at a London rally on Tuesday that “this protest is about Trumpism—the hatred and poverty that is spreading.”

“Our movement is about joining the dots between hate, bigotry, and inequality,” Aziz said.

The demonstrations and marches kicked off on Tuesday morning as Trump met with British Prime Minister Theresa May, who is resigning on Friday after failing to negotiate a Brexit deal.

Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labour Party, declined to attend a state banquet for Trump on Monday night and joined demonstrators in the streets after calling the protests “an opportunity to stand in solidarity with those he’s attacked in America, around the world, and in our own country.”

(Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams, a non-profit, independent newscentre created in 1997 and based in the USA.)