The recent demonstrations against President Trump’s visit to the UK were deeply irritating examples of virtue-signalling by the self-indulgent, prejudiced and narrow-minded. A large proportion of the marchers were, I suspect, students living on taxpayer-provided cheap loans, and well-paid public employees working in secure jobs in such sectors as the NHS and education, looking forward to fat pensions. The demonstrators called their childish activities a “carnival of resistance” and it certainly was – resistance to the interests of their fellow citizens who, in a post-Brexit era, will need all the friends Britain can get if they are to keep their jobs in manufacturing and finance, and no friend is more important than the holder of the most powerful role in the world.

It is particularly concerning when that glutton of self-indulgence, Jeremy Corbyn, the eternal student who has spent most of his career sitting on the back-benches drawing a good salary and avoiding responsibility, should have been one of the cheerleaders in this exercise in egotistical sneering from the sidelines, which is of course his style. He would have us believe he wants to be Prime Minister and actually cares about the wellbeing of the British people, and yet such is the monstrous size of his ego he could not resist the opportunity to alienate the President of the USA. Corbyn’s exercise in virtue signalling is matched by that of Nicola Sturgeon – known as Scotland’s First Minister although what she has put first is her own ego. Donald Trump is arguably the most Scottish US President ever, with his mother coming from the Isle of Lewis, and building a relationship with him should have been a top priority for Sturgeon during his visit to Scotland (into whose economy he has poured hundreds of millions of pounds, creating many jobs). But no, like Corbyn and the other anti-Trump demonstrators, she puts her personal principles above the interests of her fellow citizens, and sulks in her posh taxpayer-provided home like the archetypal student protest politician she is. Are these people ever going to grow up and recognise that Trump is somebody we have to do business with whether we like him or not? If Corbyn and Sturgeon decline to do this, then I suggest they stop taking drawing their large public sector salaries and retire to the sorts of grotty student bed-sits that would be a true reflection of their myopic politics.

Ronald McGrath

Langley Way, Watford