British Parliament Sets Deadline to Decide if They’ll Ban Trump From United Kingdom
Ministers of the British Parliament have set a formal date for when they will decide whether Donald Trump will be forbidden entry to the United Kingdom due to his inflammatory rhetoric.
Trump’s presidential campaign has been marked with controversy from the very beginning, but in the midst of proposing surveillance of mosques and banning foreign Muslims from America, a ‘We The People’-style petition saw a meteoric rise on the British government’s website. The petition argues that Trump’s speech and behavior fit the government’s criteria for permanent exclusion, and with over 560,000 signatures, the House of Commons is required to address it in a parliamentary debate.
David Cameron and other government officials have condemned Trump’s proposals, with the Prime Minister saying they were “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong,” and other members of his cabinet saying that though they don’t plan to ban Trump, he should remember that entrance to the U.K. is a privilege, not a right. The debate has been scheduled for January 18.
“By scheduling a debate on these petitions, the committee is not expressing a view on whether or not the government should exclude Donald Trump from the UK,” said Labour MP Helen Jones. “As with any decision to schedule a petition for debate, it simply means that the committee has decided that the subject should be debated. A debate will allow a range of views to be expressed.”
A separate petition calling for Trump not to be banned has gathered about 40,000 signatures, on the basis that opinions voiced on American domestic issues aren’t of concern to the UK, and that there would be diplomatic complications if Trump, as president, were banned from the country.
[h/t Huffington Post]
[Image via screengrab]
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