British lawmakers on Monday debated whether Donald Trump should be banned from Britain, after an online petition calling for him to be denied entry for making controversial anti-Muslim comments amassed more than 570,000 votes.
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Donald Trump was branded a racist demagogue, a buffoon and a “wazzock” in the British parliament as MPs debated whether to ban the Republican presidential candidate from coming to the UK.
Prime Minister David Cameron has condemned Trump’s remarks as “divisive, stupid and wrong”, but he and other senior officials have said they do not think Trump should be banned.
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, a Muslim, dismissed concerns that banning Trump would simply provide him with more publicity.
Other Labour and Tory MPs rejected the idea of a ban, saying it was counter-productive.
“These are very inflammatory times that we’re living in”, she said.
But Labour’s Jack Dromey said Trump was risky because he stirred up hatred among different faiths.
The petition came after the billionaire businessman claimed all Muslims should be banned from entering the USA following a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California in December a year ago.
Most of the dozens of lawmakers who spoke in the three-hour debate did not agree that Trump should be excluded.
Donald Trump “is the son of a Scottish immigrant and I apologize for that”, the Scottish National Party’s Anne McLaughlin said.
“The great danger by attacking this one man is that we can fix on him a halo of victimhood” and boost his popularity among supporters, Flynn said.
The petition was launched after Trump made a number of anti-Muslim remarks and said the people of faith should be banned from entering the US.
The tycoon survived and is not being banned – for now – partly because members of Parliament (MPs) don’t actually make that kind of call; the home secretary does. They pointed to a list of people who expressed similar views who were not allowed in the country. But the debate underlines the extent to which Mr. Trump’s campaign has polarized opinion beyond the United States and provided some Europeans with a new American stage villain.
He said the policy is not targeted at a specific group, adding: ” It is in the UK’s interests that we engage with all presidential candidates – Democratic and Republican – even though we may disagree profoundly on important issues”.
If Trump was banned, he would abandon his plans for a further £700 million ($1.1 billion) investment in Scotland, she said.
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, also said Trump should be allowed to come to Britain, and offered to take him to a mosque in Corbyn’s London constituency.
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A Conservative MP has called for the UK to “apologise to the people of the United States” for a petition to ban Donald Trump from the country.
