It might have been only six metres high, but the inflatable baby president provoked a lot of hot air – and even a copycat one of Sadiq Khan in a yellow bikini

When Donald Trump visited the UK in July, he was welcomed by thousands of protesters and their mascot – a six-metre-high inflatable depiction of the president as a wailing baby flying over Westminster.

There was outrage. Nigel Farage called it “the biggest ever insult to a sitting president”. The rightwing press and some Tory MPs waded in, too. Drew Liquerman, spokesman for Republicans Overseas, said the blimp was “embarrassing” for the UK.

“From our point of view, it annoyed all the right people,” says Leo Murray, the activist who helped crowdfund the blimp. “The fact that Farage was upset by it was extremely gratifying.”

While pleased with the reaction, Murray says he was confused by arguments made by a group of so-called free-speech crusaders, who, in light of the mayor of London giving permission for the Trump blimp to fly, inflated a “baby Khan” in a yellow bikini. The counter-campaigners said they were testing free speech, criticising the mayor for increasing levels of violent crime in the capital. The bikini was because the mayor has promised to ban “body-shaming adverts” on the tube. “The guy who started that was totally incoherent,” Murray says. “What was he protesting, exactly?”He said it was a freedom-of-speech protest, but he seemed to be protesting that Sadiq Khan had agreed to let another protest happen.”

On the day of the protest, some mocked the size of the blimp, which seemed disproportionate to the amount of hot air it had garnered. Murray says it was the biggest they could afford at the time. “In retrospect, had I known that people were going to give us over £40,000, we would have ordered a larger balloon,” he says. But he was surprised by how the blimp captured the country’s imagination and mobilised people against Trump. “It crystallised this massive public sentiment that we didn’t want Trump here. And we expressed that in a very British way – by taking the piss.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The blimp depicting Sadiq Kahn in a bikini, outside the Houses of Parliament. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

“There’s a lot of animosity between liberals, centrists and people like me on the left,” Murray adds. “While we’re bickering, the far right is in the ascendant and it’s really frightening. We need more of a united front against that.”

Baby Trump went on tour after the protest and has flown in Edinburgh, and in Paris on Armistice Day. The giant inflatable also greeted Trump in Buenos Aires at the G20 summit and it will continue to stalk the president until the campaigners exhaust their funds. Murray hopes its final destination will be the Museum of London – if it survives some of the more hostile territories it visits.