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When Donald Trump comes to the UK, we should do the one thing he'll find the cruellest

Let’s have some fun with the Donald – a normal protest won’t even touch the sides

Shaparak Khorsandi
Friday 27 April 2018 17:09 BST
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Donald Trump 'working visit' to UK confirmed

Trump’s coming to visit! He’s coming to the UK and folk are already planning protests. I’ve started to get emails from various activist groups I am sympathetic towards, asking me to join a protest, speak at a rally or to nip to B&Q and buy plywood to make placards.

Now, I love a protest. I love a good chant in a crowd and if it’s a sunny day you can take a flask and some sandwiches and it’s a free day out. When I was younger, I went on so many protests I couldn’t not take any opportunity to chant: “What do we want? TABLE FOR TWO! Where do we want it? BY THE WINDOW PLEASE!”

But I think that with this visit, we should take a different approach. Traditional protests won’t touch Donald’s sides. He has heard all the chants, seen all the placards, read all the tweets. Seriously, all the tweets. This man knows Twitter off by heart.

Mobs of protesters aren’t what is needed when he comes. That’s not to say I want him here, but once you’ve had Robert Mugabe over to tea, you can hardly bolt the door against the democratically elected leader of the free world.

I find Donald Trump as repugnant as anyone else who believes you should ask (and only if it’s appropriate to) before you grab someone else’s genitals. It’s also my belief that if you don’t consider you are a racist, then you ought to truly question why you seem so popular with the type who recoil from anyone with a tan or why the sort of people who like to put sheets on their heads with eyeholes cut out dig the cut of your jib.

I’d rather a potato was POTUS, in other words, but there you are. You can’t always get what you want and sometimes you get precisely the opposite.

None of this is to say we should do nothing when he comes Trumpety Trumping to our little island in July. We should have some fun. My suggestion is that we take him on the London Underground at rush hour and tell him our custom is to stand on the left as we go down. Trump waged a war on compassion, so let the passive-aggressive wrath of London commuters chill him to his bone marrow.

Let’s make him watch a cricket tournament. If you don’t know the game and weren’t raised with it, it is at best confusing and at worst mind-numbing. Feigning interest in it is a Herculean effort. If he survives these things, we must bring out The Big Guns; we’ll release Prince Philip on to him.

That’ll pull the rug out from under his feet. The Prince will make him look like the biggest lefty snowflake on the planet within seconds. It was Prince Philip, after all, who said, during the 1981 recession, “Everyone was saying we should have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed!”

Let’s not forget, as well, that during a state visit to China, he said to some British students he met in the country, “If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed!”

Donald Trump will have met his match. We’ll send the two of them to play golf and after a few hours with Philip, I guarantee Trump will be a broken man. He will return from lunch to announce he has seen the light and joined the #MeToo movement. Then he’ll declare that he wants to do away with national borders and that he plans to change his name to Mustafa.

Or we can do the thing which seems almost too cruel to even write down. Please don’t judge me – I try to be a good person but some people just bring out the worst in me.

OK, I’ll say it... we ignore him. Yup. Send a message round that on Friday 13th July and for the duration of his visit, all who oppose Trump, his sordid policies and his inhumane opinions should hole up with family and dear ones doing stuff they really enjoy, far away from the president and whoever is having to endure him.

Let’s give ourselves a little break from social media. Abandon all hashtags and arguments with strangers and let’s go rollerblading in the park instead. Trump thrives on attention, good or bad, so let’s all go on a picnic and not invite him. I will buy the ice cream if you join me.

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