London: Millions of ordinary Britons this week found themselves in an unusual, almost unprecedented, position thanks to US presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric — they all agree with mass media pantomime villain Piers Morgan.
Morgan, the former Daily Mirror editor turned TV chat show host, on Tuesday wrote an open letter to his friend Trump in which he branded the Republican’s proposal to stop all Muslims from entering the US as bigoted and hypocritical.
“Your demand ... is so completely, utterly and dangerously wrong,” Morgan wrote in the Daily Mail. “When applied to US citizens who happen to also be Muslim, your rule would be a clear, flagrant breach of the US Constitution. A document you bow at the altar to during every debate about guns.”
Politicians, media commentators and the general public were all inclined to agree with the controversial 50-year-old as a campaign to ban billionaire Trump, who owns the famous Turnberry golf course in Scotland, from entering the UK gathered momentum.
Online petition
By Wednesday morning, an online petition calling for him to be blacklisted had more than 100,000 signatories.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman said he believed Trump’s comments were “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong”, while opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said they were an “affront to common humanity.”
But the Scottish National Party’s Tasmina Ahmad-Shaikh — Scotland’s first female Muslim MP — went further by writing to Home Secretary Theresa May calling for Trump to be banned from the UK because of his “hate preaching”.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, meanwhile, was asked about comparisons between Trump and her fictional baddie. “How horrible. Voldemort was nowhere near as bad,” she said.
Wednesday’s newspapers reflected the mood, with the Independent splashing with the headline “Ban him from Britain!” as others focused on Trump’s assertion that “places in London are so radicalised that police are afraid for their own lives”.
The capital’s mayor Boris Johnson responded with the barb: “The only reason I wouldn’t go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump.”
That claim also prompted some humorous responses on Twitter, with #TrumpFacts soon trending. Alexander J. Martin tweeted: “Britain is so radicalised one of its favourite actors is Syrian McKellen.”
