UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn will join a demonstration in London against US President Donald Trump’s state visit on Tuesday delivering a speech at the event, according to the party’s spokesperson.
Corbyn has said that he supports the idea of holding a rally against Trump, who arrived in London on Monday for a three-day visit, as an “opportunity to stand in solidarity with those that he’s attacked in America, around the world, and in our own country”. In protest against Trump’s polices, Corbyn, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable, and Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow refused to attend the Monday evening banquet in Trump’s honor at Buckingham Palace.
“Jeremy Corbyn will attend and speak at the demonstration tomorrow against President Donald Trump’s state visit”, Labour spokesperson said on Monday, as quoted by the Independent newspaper.
The demonstration, set to begin at 11:00 a.m. local time (10:00 GMT) in Trafalgar Square, is expected to draw both ordinary activists and politicians, who will march to Parliament Square.
Trump’s working visit to the United Kingdom last July, according to the organizers, gathered an estimated quarter of a million people. This year, the organizers aim to attract even more participants. The demonstrators have already created a five-meter talking robot of Trump sitting on the toilet.
On Tuesday morning, they also plan to fly a balloon depicting the US president as a giant, diaper-clad baby, similar to that launched during Trump’s 2018 visit.
Tensions around Trump’s trip rose well before his plane landed in London. Two days ahead of the visit, London Mayor Sadiq Khan wrote in an editorial for The Guardian, that Trump was one of the most “egregious examples” of the growing threat of rising nationalism and that it was “un-British to be rolling out the red carpet” for a US president who was “seen as a figurehead of the global far-right movement”.
Trump, in turn, slammed Khan saying he did a “terrible job” in office, branding him a “stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London” instead of criticizing him.