As U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s “embarrassing sham of a government” continued its slow-motion collapse on Monday with the resignation of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, British authorities scrambled to prepare for “unprecedented” protests against U.S. President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit by launching a major police mobilization aimed at containing what organizers have dubbed “The Carnival of Resistance.”
“Donald Trump likes to pose as an international tough guy, but it looks like he’s too scared to face protesters in London. If true, this is already a huge victory for protesters.”
—Stand Up to Trump
Hundreds of thousands of Britons are expected to take to the streets nationwide on Friday in opposition to Trump, who is scheduled to arrive in the U.K. Thursday evening. The protests—which will include a 20-foot-tall angry Trump baby blimp flying over London—are expected to be so large that White House officials are reportedly concerned that the crowd-obsessed Trump could lash out at his British hosts.
“We need to show the world what millions of people in this country think of the bigotry and the hatred that he represents,” Owen Jones, a Guardian columnist who helped organize the anti-Trump demonstrations, told TIME on Monday. “We’ve seen the rise of the far right in Britain and Europe, and the one lesson we should learn from history is that when racists and the far right mobilize, you fight back, you don’t let them march and rise to power.”
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According to the British Sunday Times, White House officials are planning to do all they can to “shield” Trump from the demonstrations by keeping him on a tightly organized schedule, but this will be difficult as Britons have organized enormous demonstrations in major cities throughout the country.
Speaking to the Guardian on Monday, one chief constable said the police resources requested by the government to contain the mass demonstrations were on the level that would be required “if London was burning down.”
“Donald Trump likes to pose as an international tough guy, but it looks like he’s too scared to face protesters in London,” the group Stand Up to Trump declared in a statement, alluding to the U.S. president’s reported plans to steer clear of the streets of London. “If true, this is already a huge victory for protesters.”
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