Trump UK visit reaction: Twitter urges May to channel Love Actually

After an extraordinary interview with The Sun in which Trump criticised Theresa May’s handling of Brexit and tipped Cabinet turncoat Boris Johnson for Number 10, the Prime Minister could be forgiven for already feeling tired of her controversial guest.

However, Twitter users believe they have a solution, urging May to channel Hugh Grant’s prime minister character in Love Actually and hit back at Trump.

In a scene from the 2003 romcom, the PM breaks from diplomatic protocol to give Billy Bob Thornton's boorish US president a public dressing-down which many of Trump’s British detractors found spookily prescient today.

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Grant warns that the “special relationship” has become a “bad relationship”, one “based on the president taking exactly what he wants, and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to Britain”.

"We may be a small country, but we’re a great one too,” he says, before listing iconic Britons from Shakespeare to The Beatles.

The fictional PM ends his inspiring speech with this warning: "A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward I will be prepared to be much stronger - and the president should be prepared for that.”

For many, it was the perfect rallying cry against Trump, who has frequently been derided as a “bully” for his strongarm approach to diplomacy and readiness to insult allies and rivals alike.

As Love Actually started trending, BBC Three’s Twitter account even attempted a - distinctly dodgy - video mockup of what such a scene might look like:

Elsewhere, users enjoyed sharing their favourite signs from the Trump protests taking place in Blenheim Palace last night and in the capital today, ranging from witty jabs at the president’s supposed admiration of Winston Churchill:

To messages you might describe as “straight to the point”: