Trump protest in London: When do they start and where are they taking place?
POTUS avoids capital to meet with Theresa May at Chequers and the Queen at Windsor Castle
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Your support makes all the difference.After a typically unconventional showing at the Nato summit in Brussles, Donald Trump arrived in the UK on Thursday night with mass protests planned to oppose his administration.
The US president is meeting with the prime minister, Theresa May, at Chequers, her country estate in Buckinghamshire, on Friday before taking tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle, where he will be treated to a Guard of Honour.
Planned demonstrations commenced on the evening of Thursday 12 July at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire - where the president and the first lady, Melania Trump, attended a black-tie banquet with business leaders and government minsters - and in London's Regent’s Park, where the US ambassador’s residence is situated.
Further protests were staged on the roads approaching Chequers on Friday morning, before the main event begins this afternoon outside the BBC’s headquarters in central London at 2pm.
Marchers from organisations including the TUC, Stop the War, Friends of the Earth and Momentum will then proceed down Regent’s Street to Trafalgar Square for a gathering at 5pm.
Activist Leo Murray has meanwhile raised the £16,000 needed to pay for “Project Trump Baby”, a six-metre-high inflatable version of the president with unusually small hands and feet and sporting a nappy, which is being flown this morning in Parliament Square.
The Greater London Authority gave Mr Murray permission to tether the balloon in Westminster after a petition secured 10,000 signatures.
A spokesman for London's mayor, Sadiq Khan, said he “supports the right to peaceful protest and understands that this can take many different forms”.
Avoiding London to escape such indignities appeared to be a priority for the president and his security detail.
He is also due to visit Scotland as part of the trip, from where his family hails and where Mr Trump owns golf resorts in Aberdeenshire and Ayrshire.
Protests are being held there too in anticipation – in Glasgow on Friday and Edinburgh on Saturday, where organisers are promising “a carnival of resistance”, with anti-Trump fairground-style games promised among the attractions.
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