Time for protesters to quit?

Bad losers? I should say so.
1995 library filer of Chris Moncrieff. Photo by Peter Smith/PA1995 library filer of Chris Moncrieff. Photo by Peter Smith/PA
1995 library filer of Chris Moncrieff. Photo by Peter Smith/PA

The anti-Brexit campaigners still don’t seem to understand that they lost the referendum last June, and seem hell-bent on frustrating the will of the British voting public, probably excusing their antics by calling in aid the title of the late and great Tam Dalyell’s last book, The Importance of Being Awkward. And as for the hordes who clog up our city streets denouncing Donald Trump, those who now attack him, especially across The Pond, should have worked harder to ensure he was defeated at the election. But they failed.

Trump was legitimately elected President of the United States and is doing what he undertook to do during the campaign. People may not like it or him, but to quote a politician’s cliche, “We are where we are”. Assuming the State Visit goes ahead, it cannot be watered down to transform him into a second-class President. He must be allowed to address Parliament in Westminster Hall and be treated courteously according to his rank. Anything less would be degrading – and could damage the UK-US special relationship.

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Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has accused anti-Trump protestors of “staggering over-reaction”. He said: “I cannot recall such demonstrations against terrible and autocratic regimes such as Burma, Sudan and North Korea. It is one of the key characteristics of those who consider themselves progressive to reserve condemnation for America, the West, or Israel, and ignore actual evil-doers.”

Hear, hear.

- Could it be curtains for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on February 23, the date of the two by-elections at Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent Central? They are in the so-called Labour heartland, yet bookmakers suspect they could lose both of them. With Labour in disarray, Corbyn may well find the pressure on him to stand down overwhelming if Labour fail to win these tests. Solidarity, in the form of some 50 rebel MPs in the Brexit vote, has come back and hit him on the nose like a boomerang. That may have been just a superficial wound. Copeland and Stoke could be fatal.