British lawmakers are actually going to debate stopping the divisive US presidential candidate Donald Trump from entering their country, after half a million Brits signed an online petition calling for a ban.
Parliament is required to consider debating any petition that garners more than 100,000 signatures; the “Ban Trump” petition had more than half a million at the end of December. Last week, the government issued a rare statement in response, pointing out that “the Home Secretary may exclude a non-European Economic Area national from the UK if she considers their presence in the UK to be non-conducive to the public good”; and “the Home Secretary has said that Donald Trump’s remarks in relation to Muslims are divisive, unhelpful and wrong.”
A parliamentary committee has scheduled an official debate to be held on Jan. 18. But though some members of Parliament have reportedly signed the petition, and prime minister David Cameron has publicly denounced Trump, an agreement to ban the US businessman’s entry to the UK is far from certain. And Trump isn’t scheduled to travel across the pond anytime soon, anyway, making such a ban “hypothetical,” according to The Guardian.
The UK has banned foreign nationals, including the American athlete Mike Tyson and French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, from its soil before. Tyson was a convicted rapist and M’bala served jail time for anti-Semitic remarks.