Featured Image Credit: @liviafirth/Instagram
Topics: Celebrity, Royal Family, Donald Trump, Politics, UK News
Ella Scott
Topics: Celebrity, Royal Family, Donald Trump, Politics, UK News
Fashion campaigner and Italian activist Livia Giuggioli has announced that she’s returning her honorary MBE following US President Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK.
Earlier this month, the 79-year-old and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, 55, touched down in the UK for what was a history-making state visit.
Trump, who was personally invited to Windsor Castle by King Charles III, became the first leader in history to be granted a second visit.
The event saw conspiracy theorists alleging that Melania had been ‘replaced’ by a body double, and caused major outcry when the politician was accused of breaking major royal protocol.
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Now, Livia Giuggioli - an Italian activist and former wife of actor Colin Firth - has joined the masses contesting the royals for schmoozing with Trump.
On Wednesday (September 24), the 56-year-old took to Instagram to announce she couldn’t ‘reconcile’ the way the 47th POTUS was ‘appeased and honoured’ by the British monarchy.
Because of this, Giuggioli has decided to relinquish the honorary MBE she received in 2019 for services in sustainable fashion.
“In 2019 I was given this MBE honour for my services in trying to make the fashion supply chain a more just and less deadly place to work for garment workers across the world,” she wrote in the clip’s caption.
“Although I stand against the British Empire and remnants of that toxic system, I accepted the honour on behalf of the many garment worker activists who had educated and supported me.
“I also had great respect for King Charles, who was then the Prince of Wales, and his decades battling on behalf of social and environmental justice.”
Calling Trump a ‘horrible excuse of a human’, Giuggioli claimed she’d been reflecting on his second state visit. She admitted that his trip showed her ‘nothing of those values’ she thought King Charles ‘upheld’.
“Rather, a frightening and cowardly display of appeasing someone who stands for the obliteration of the natural world and the most vulnerable people on earth," she continued.
“Because I can’t reconcile those two positions, I have shredded my honour and I am returning it to sender.”
The mother of two continued, claiming she knew ‘so many honourable, decent British people’ who would be unable to reconcile their ‘deeply held values of fairness and justice with the grotesque pantomime we witnessed’.
“I think it’s only by taking a stand that we can make our feelings known,” she added.
One of Giuggioli and Firth’s sons, Luca Firth, has since come out in defence of his mother.
The 23-year-old musician wrote via Instagram Stories: “I think if you see a woman who has been awarded for her efforts creating and implementing REAL and lasting change in this world, disagreeing with the power and rhetoric of a person who fundamentally disagrees with everything she stands for, and all you have to offer is insulting her sexual value as a woman, it says a lot more about YOU than anyone else."
“F**k Trump,” he added.
Giuggioli and her ex-husband met on the set of the BBC drama Nostromo in 1996. The pair married a year later.
In 2019, the couple announced their separation, with a representative saying at the time that they maintained a ‘close friendship’.
As well as Luca, Firth shares son Matteo with Giuggioli, and Bridget Jones’s Baby alumnus Will, 35, with then-girlfriend Meg Tilly, 65.