Lawmakers Debate Barring Trump From UK

British lawmakers on Monday will stage an interesting debate: whether to bar Donald Trump from entering the country as a matter of principle. The move comes after more than 500,000 people in the UK signed a petition calling for the ban because of Trump's idea to temporarily ban Muslims from coming to the US. No vote will follow the debate, reports Reuters, making this more an airing of views. Interior minister Theresa May is the only one who can issue such a ban, and the Guardian reports that it doesn't look likely. Still, it should be lively. "What I will be doing today is asking that Theresa May exercise constancy in her approach to people who preach hatred," says Scottish National Party lawmaker Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.

But Labour lawmaker Paul Flynn think it's misguided—not that he sounds like a Trump fan. "Sadly a ban would perversely help him in America, and that is where opinion matters," he says. "It would probably give him a halo of victimhood as a martyr and perversely that will attract more support for him." No tweets so far from Trump about Monday's debate, though he has previously threatened to yank $1 billion in investments in golf courses in Scotland if he is banned. The BBC has a Q&A on the controversy, and it's aimed squarely at UK readers, given the very first question: "Who is Donald Trump?" (More Donald Trump stories.)