Trump’s State Visit: A call for national derision
In spite of the magnificent language of their Privy Council oaths, which oblige them to defend King Charles's Dominion over Canada, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet have invited Donald Trump to a state visit. Reports suggest that Peter Mandelson (also a Privy Councillor) has actively promoted the visit and is urging it to happen sooner rather than later.
Given his experience with organizing national celebrations, in Mandelson’s hands the visit may be as big a frost as his mediocre and unremembered Millennium Experience, whose calamitous opening night gets more space in Tony Blair’s long memoirs than the introduction of the minimum wage.
But nothing can be left to chance and a great deal of preparation is required to secure the scale of derision which Donald Trump deserves (and most fears) and which would obliterate the official flummery and fawning. We need a co-ordinating coalition of manifold multi-disciplinary mockers to prepare a range of events. They might be called Deriders On The Storm.
I volunteer for service and would like to suggest one event for the mix: the Donald Dirge.
At a given moment on his visit, musicians and singers everywhere in the UK would play or chant a single dismal chord. I think that E minor should be in most people's range and it would pick up the note emitted by Big Ben. There is no need for this to be confined to professional musicians and singers: indeed, the presence of off-key and discordant amateurs would make the protest more vivid. And of course, people could take part without even leaving their homes. They could be invited to join the Dirge by the Deriders' anthem below.
A good moment for this protest would be the opening of Trump's address to both Houses of Parliament, and it could be started then by a celebrated conductor. (Trump may have asked, and Mandelson could well have promised, that he should deliver this from the Throne, Melania by his side in some of the spare Crown Jewels, our own King and Queen looking up at him from the steps.)
The Dirge should be sustained throughout Trump's speech and loud enough to penetrate the walls of the Palace of Westminster and drown it out. It is possible that military musicians might prefer not to serenade Trump in the usual way for state visitors, in objection to his desertion of the NATO alliance or for a host of other reasons. There would need to be intense security vetting against the possibility of service protestors and even then, it is likely to fail, for one can never predict when instruments may suddenly go out of tune (especially bagpipes and bugles) or when service personnel may suddenly faint.
That said, Trump has singlehandedly facilitated such an uplift to defence spending that British and European weapons makers might covertly finance any protest which counters the idea that he is a “normal” President.
Rehearsals for the Dirge could take place outside the Russian embassy, and those of other tyrannies. It is a form of protest which might catch on in their countries and one which even the most pervasive tyranny would find difficult to suppress.
Another ideal place for a rehearsal would be the coming Runcorn and Helsby by-election. Deriders On The Storm would open its ranks to local mockers offering suitable “turns”. They could turn the constituency into Funcorn and Whatthehelsby and offer local voters the chance to make it the anti-Trump capital of the world. Huge sums of money were raised against Trump in the American elections and are already being raised for the mid-term elections. (American political fundraising has no close season.) Some of this money could well be attracted into Funcorn and Whatthelsby. So would many talented people who have been sacked by Trump’s purge of government service, or returning British emigrants and Americans who find it unbearable to live and work in Trumpworld. The McCarthy era in the 1950s produced such a wave of migration to the UK, which was welcome to Winston Churchill’s last government. It included my parents.
I realize that it is asking a lot to sustain one chord alone through an entire oration by Donald Trump, and for relief, I can offer a selection of the ditties I composed against him during the Election campaign. They include "(Don't Know Why They Should Find A Case To Try From) Stormy Daniels," "He's A Trump", and "Jailhouse Trump", and can all be found on https://richardheller.net/blog...; A particularly easy and repeatable singalong is “For He’s A Jolly Bad Felon.”
All of this material would be free for use in any events organized by Deriders On The Storm. So too my sonnet against Donald Trump, also used in the election campaign, although sadly the Shakespearean demographic is not a great influence in key swing states.
Drunker on ego than the strongest booze
On clouds of lies he floats in toxic air
No “fact” that isn’t faker than his hair:
Acknowledging the “crowd” he soon will lose.
Lips alternating words and grins at random,
Desolate wastes of fantasy and lie,
Junkyards of hate where truth and honor die,
Tempting the dark desires of his fandom.
Running without a program or a plan
Unless to hear the chanting of his name:
Mount Rushmore is too small to house his fame.
President to prove himself a man.
For God’s sake, shut your mouth and let us breathe.
Off-switch, you lardmouth: find some place to seethe.
It is not clear whether Trump’s deputy would be included in the state visit but he certainly deserves some effort by Deriders On The Storm. Drag artists might be invited to put on full slap and eyeliner to present the character of Vance President Vice.
Events by Deriders On The Storm could provide an entertaining and media-attractive alternative to conventional forms of protest and help to dispel the threats of violence around Trump’s visit. These would not only throw a huge burden on the police and other guardians of public order but would actually benefit Donald Trump with his domestic voters.
The organization might remain in readiness for other obnoxious visitors, and even develop an export market for its services. One place to begin is Greenland. It is hard to read the result of their recent elections except that none of their 40,000 voters asked to be ruled by Donald Trump instead of King Frederik of Denmark or themselves. They might like to build a colossal ice statue of Trump. Then if he continues to promote climate change he would actually succeed in melting himself.
President Zelenskyy, a qualified satirist, might be invited to become the organization’s President, especially if Trump succeeds in securing his deposition.
Richard Heller was chief of staff to Denis Healey and Gerald Kaufman, and as a journalist has reported on and analysed six Presidential elections. He is also the author of The Prisoner of Rubato Towers.
