Livia Giuggioli Returns Honorary MBE Over Trump Visit

Livia Giuggioli Firth, the Italian-born sustainable fashion campaigner and former wife of actor Colin Firth, announced on Wednesday that she has returned her honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire after publicly shredding the award certificate in an Instagram video. Giuggioli said she was taking the step in protest at what she described as the British establishment's "appeasement" of US President Donald Trump during his state visit to the United Kingdom last week.

In the video and a handwritten letter sent to the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood, Giuggioli photographed the medal in its box and showed herself tearing up the certificate. She said the state's reception of Mr. Trump and his recent speech to the United Nations General Assembly left her unable to reconcile the honour with her values. "As I write this, we see that horrible excuse of a human called Trump in full flow at the UN General Assembly, his poisonous rhetoric amplified and legitimised," she wrote, adding that the UK display was "a frightening and cowardly display of appeasing someone who stands for the obliteration of the natural world and the most vulnerable people on earth."