Sorry, Britain. For the past quarter-century you’ve been my home and, while I think of America as my family, I think of you as my best friend. You’re the flatmate whose music I frequently borrow and whose accent I still find utterly adorable. And what do I give you in return? The absolute worst member of my family as a house guest.

Every family has an embarrassing relative: a racist uncle, a mean aunt, an idiotic brother-in-law. All of mine are combined in one orange person coming over, and he’ll clog up our pipes with his extraordinarily long strands of (totally real) hair, and his weird friends Nigel and Piers will be on TV constantly, hoping he asks them over to play. (Well, those guys are on you so we’re all a little to blame here.)

It was so different last time, when cool Uncle Barack came over. Everyone wanted to hang out with him, whereas this time the US embassy has issued a statement advising Americans in London to “keep a low profile” during Donald Trump’s visit, which says more about the inflammatory and divisive feelings that Trump and his government engender than British people’s actual feelings towards Americans. You have to admire the embassy’s move here, seemingly designed to assuage Trump’s ego: “Oh no, Mr President, they’re not protesting against you - they’re protesting against all Americans!” Still, it does suggest that not even the embassy is expecting this visit to be a roaring diplomatic success.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by one’s feelings about Trump, but my feeling about his visit can be summed up in a single word: embarrassment. This isn’t just about his politics – although let’s admit it is nicer to have your non-racist relatives come to stay as opposed to the one who tried to ban Muslims from entering the US, and said 15,000 recent immigrants from Haiti “all have Aids”.

According to a poll last week, 49% of America thinks Trump is a racist, which, on the downside, makes you wonder about the other 51%, but, on the upside, is more than the number of Americans who voted for him to be president.

It’s not even about the way he’s the 21st century’s Typhoid Mary, spreading divisiveness, stupidity and social media insanity wherever he goes, dragging our collective IQ down 20 points every time we think about him. It’s more than that: you know how you used to avoid inviting friends over on holidays, even though your mum kept telling you to, because that uncle was going to be there, the one who shouted at the TV and said things like: “The thing about Richard Littlejohn is, he just talks so much sense”? Imagine that feeling, but on an international level, with the added fear that this relative was half a tweet away from breaking the world. Sorry, Britain.

Some Brits have been holding forth on how we should be more welcoming to Donald – put chocolates on his pillow, read Breitbart’s headlines to him over breakfast. One described the planned protests against him as evidence of the left’s “anti-Americanism” . Lemme stop ya there. America literally gained its freedom by the Patriots rising up against its spoilt, divisive and, it soon transpired, medically insane ruler. Saying it’s anti-American for liberals to protest at their demonstrably unfit leader is as ahistorical as suggesting America is for Americans, not immigrants (which, funnily enough, Trump’s administration implies quite a lot). Like I said, Donald drags down all of our IQ points.

And, contrary to what the US embassy seems to think, there will be quite a lot of us American expats at the protests this week in Britain, so I think we can decide for ourselves what’s good for America and what’s not, thanks. Can someone let me know when certain people decided that blind support of the government would now be known as patriotism? That message seems quite popular in Britain, too, with Brexiteers insisting any doubt in Brexit literally damages the country – did we start this, or did you? Who even knows any more. Well, sorry, Britain.

For America, Trump has been like the nightmare lodger who suddenly moves out of your garage, takes over your house and trashes it. But maybe, for one week, he can be good for this country. After a long and fractious two years, the World Cup has at least started to bring England back together. Loathing Trump is something I honestly feel the whole UK can get behind, and maybe this is the unifying moment we all need.

So when he hides in the bathroom in Chequers, furiously tweeting about what a dump the NHS is, how Birmingham is literally a war zone and, most importantly, what a shithole country this is for not screening Fox & Friends every morning, Brits can look at one another anew, realise that what binds them is far deeper than what separates them, and think: no matter how bad things are here, at least you didn’t elect that guy. You’re welcome, Britain.