U.S. President Donald Trump | Mario Tama/Getty Images 5 best moments from the UK’s anti-Trump debate After 1.8 million people signed a petition to stop the US president getting a state visit, MPs spend three hours debating whether to let him in.

If Britain and America are "two nations divided by a common language," they're also divided by their approach to politics.

You couldn't get further from the whoops, hollers and made-up stories about Sweden at U.S. President Donald Trump's Florida rally Saturday than Westminster on Monday evening as British MPs discussed if it was appropriate for the American president to be granted a state visit later in the year after a petition against such a visit was signed by 1.8 million people. (House of Commons rules dictate that petitions attracting more than 100,000 signatures should be considered for discussion.)

While the debate won't make a difference as U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May has already rejected the petition and there was no vote after the debate, it was at times impassioned — by British standards, all "thank you for giving way, my honorable friend" and warnings that talking in the public gallery would see the entire thing brought to a halt.

Here are the most noteworthy moments:

Don't mess with the royals

Almost 2 million people may have wanted to spare Her Majesty the "embarrassment" of meeting Trump, but her name wasn't allowed to be bandied about in the debating chamber.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, quite possibly the poshest member of the House of Commons, shouted down Paul Flynn with the phrase "don't pimp out the Queen" when he suggested that the monarch was being used as a pawn to get Britain a better trade deal.

A couple of hours later, Scottish National Party Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh reminded her colleagues that Trump posted a tweet in 2012 saying it would be acceptable to take nude photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge. "Any family would not want to welcome someone into their home after a remark like that," she said.

Referring to reports that Trump does not want to meet Prince Charles during the state visit, in case the prince brings up climate change, former SNP leader Alex Salmond said Trump must be the first person invited on a state visit who tried to pick which royals he will meet.

Paul Flynn, insulter-in-chief

The veteran Labour MP got the debate underway and didn't hold back. He said the "intellectual capacity of the president is proto-zoan," described Trump as a "petulant child," decried the "cavernous depths of his climate ignorance" and described him as having "a ceaseless incontinence of free speech."

On a more sober note, Flynn said that since 1952 only two other U.S. presidents have been accorded a state visit and the U.K. should "set an example" by not allowing this visit to go ahead.

He said protests against Trump were "an expression of fear and anxiety that we had someone in the White House wielding this enormous power."

"We've had people here who are very unsavory characters ... certainly, we can't try to imitate the errors of the past, we should set an example by making sure we don't make those mistakes again," he said.

'Get over it'

Conservative MP Nigel Evans was having none of the protests against Trump's transatlantic visit, telling critics to "get over it." Other Tory MPs also said the visit was important. Julian Lewis asked his colleagues to consider the benefits to be gained of inviting Trump to the U.K. to get him to firm up his support for NATO.

"If you knew that it’d make a significant difference to bringing him on side to continue with the policies that prevented a conflagration on that scale, do you really think it is more important to berate him, castigate him and encourage him to retreat into some sort of bunker rather than to do what the prime minister did — perhaps more literally than any of us expected — which is to take him by the hand and try and lead him down the paths of righteousness?" said Lewis, who chairs the parliament's defense committee. "What really matters to the future of Europe is that transatlantic alliance continues and should prosper."

Another Tory, James Cartlidge, said there would be a big winner if the offer of a state visit were withdrawn.

"I’ll tell you who will win — there’s one man, and that’s Vladimir Putin. There will be smiles all round in the Kremlin if we follow this petition because the one thing they want in the Kremlin above all else is to divide the West.

"They want the UK and US divided, they do not want a strong transatlantic partnership — that’s not just in our interests but in the global interest."

Debate inside, protests outside

While MPs were inside the debating chamber, anti-Trump protests were being held across the U.K. According to the Stop Trump coalition website, 11 British cities were hosting rallies to coincide with the parliamentary discussion, including in Parliament Square. Inside Westminster Hall, the SNP's Carol Monaghan was asked to speak up because she couldn't be heard over the sound of protesters outside. Organizers said more than 20,000 people were at the London rally.

The coalition called a nationwide day of action and the protests were coordinated by the One Day Without Us movement, celebrating the contribution immigrants make to British society. According to a study released Monday by a think tank, the British economy would suffer a £328 million hit if migrants stopped working for just one day.

The study, by the New Economics Foundation, found that the health service and other parts of the economy would be unable to function if all migrant workers — which make up 10.9 percent of the country’s total workforce — stopped working for the day. It also found that U.K. GDP would fall by 4 percent as a result of such a stoppage.

Official response

Alan Duncan, a foreign office minister, responded to the debate on behalf of the government. He said that while the government does not agree with Trump's plans for an migration ban, the visit reflects the importance of the special relationship between the two countries.

He described state visits as uniquely British events, adding "we believe we should use all the tools at our disposal to build common ground with President Trump."

Duncan said he hoped Trump would receive a “polite and generous” welcome when he arrives.