On Monday afternoon, roughly 100 protesters swathed in European Union flags and carrying signs bearing slogans like “I am not a bargaining chip,” “EU Worker Making Britain Great Again,” and “Brexit and Trump: Sound the Alarm,” gathered quietly on Parliament Square, opposite the British Houses of Parliament. Silently, they linked arms and formed a circle on the grassy lawn, holding up their placards for photographers, who had ample space to maneuver. The demonstration, part of a national day of action to support the rights of EU citizens, migrants, and asylum-seekers in a post-Brexit United Kingdom, had been in the works for months. In the immediate aftermath of the referendum vote in June, thousands marched in support of the same causes. Yet on Monday, the demonstrators dispersed after posing for photographs for about an hour, many filtering into parliament to lobby their representatives—a run-of-the-mill protest, by most measures. [...]
Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, left-leaning Londoners have been asking themselves whether Trump or Brexit is worse. May is expected to trigger Article 50, which will begin Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, as early as the first week of March. The long road to Brexit, marked by murky legal proceedings, negotiations, and carefully worded government assurances, has obscured its potential ramifications, including a $58.4-billion economic contraction and a 3-percent drop in GDP by 2020, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The economy is already showing signs of a labor shortage as EU workers consider leaving their jobs in Britain. Despite that, Brexit is almost certainly permanent: There is no legal precedent for the withdrawal of Article 50, though some lawmakers contend it can be done. [...]
May is set on her vision for making Britain a “fully independent, sovereign country,” as she has put it, by securing a “hard” Brexit—a departure from both the EU single market and freedom of movement laws—and a dramatic decrease in immigration. Protests seem unlikely to change her agenda. And despite the obvious fact that Brits have no power to oust Trump, or even to stop his state visit, the American president’s virulence makes him far easier to oppose. In Trump, Liberal Brits have found a cipher through which to vent frustrations with their own government—but by training their efforts on him, movements like the Stop Trump Coalition may have picked the wrong target.
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