Why Donald Trump's mother's birthplace has a lesson for Scotland in dealing with US President

It’s all there – ruthlessness, vanity, venality, bullying, bombast, contempt for the rights of those he perceives as lesser mortals... None of that is open to dispute. Neither, at the time, was the sycophancy of the Scottish Government or Robert Gordon University, which gave him an honorary degree and then made itself look even dafter by taking it away again.

That was then and this is now. The personal characteristics show no sign of having changed. Like it or not, however, the same Donald John Trump is now President of the United States, elected for the second time with the votes of 77 million people. We might deplore it from afar but we also have to lump it. The American people have spoken.

Trump loves denunciations

As ever, it is necessary to separate the office from the person and righteous indignation from diplomacy. Self-interest as well as common courtesy dictates that Trump should be treated with the respect his office commands and also that his “personal visit” should be taken at face value.

If we wonder why he is back in Scotland, we should not forget the zeal with which his investment and brand were pursued in the first place. And if he wants to dedicate a memorial garden to his mother, then maybe he should be allowed to do just that with as little politicisation as is realistically possible.

Respect, of course, does not mean acquiescence. It just means civility. I suspect that only a pretty small minority of Scots want to see next week’s visit turned into a circus and for anyone who plans to make it one, the relevant question is: “Who gains?” Trump is well accustomed to demonstrations and denunciations. He loves them. What he’s much less used to is being ignored.

I am not naïve enough to think that is going to happen and everyone has a right to protest. There are myriad grounds for not liking Trump or his policies. However, there also many reasons why it is the interests of Scotland and the UK to maintain a decent relationship, as events of the past few months have confirmed.

Jobs depend on diplomacy

When Keir Starmer had his initial meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, John Swinney was straight out the traps to denounce the offer of a state visit, a treat for poor old King Charles which is yet in store. That’s the difference between grandstanding without responsibility and the realpolitik which diplomacy demands.

Starmer was, of course, right to play every diplomatic card in the interests of establishing a relationship which would protect the UK from Trump’s trade jingoism at that time. It is greatly to the benefit of Scottish industries that he did so, rather than following more excitable advice, and the trade deal which followed seems to mean that we will escape the worst of tariffs. Not a bad trade-off for the flummery of a state visit. People’s jobs depend on diplomacy, not denunciation.

There is also the difficulty that if policies could be separated from personality, Scotland’s views on Trump might be more nuanced than assumed. For example, the “Stop Trump Coalition” is “encouraging all those who can to come to Aberdeen to show Trump exactly what we in Scotland think of him”. But who are these “we in Scotland” – or more specifically in Aberdeen?

There are probably far more in the north-east who agree, than disagree, with Trump’s insistence that there is life left in the North Sea, which it makes no sense to abandon for as long as we are gas dependent (ie, the Norwegian policy). The fact Trump is saying that does not make it wrong and if his meetings encourage both Scottish and UK Governments to think again, it would be no bad thing.

While that does not need to be linked to his irrational hatred of “windmills”, there is no shortage of doubters about whether the “just transition” which was promised is actually happening. The beneficiaries of failing to acknowledge any of that will be exactly the forces which Trump has aligned himself to in this country, in the person of Nigel Farage, which would doubtless fill the “Stop Trump Coalition” with equal horror.

Learning from Lewis

Maybe the rest of Scotland has a lesson to learn from Lewis which has had to deal with the Trump enigma for longer than anyone else. With any less divisive figure than Trump, it would be a matter of great pride that the President of the United States is the son of an economic migrant who followed the American dream while always maintaining her links with the island.

The politics of Trump – and not least his treatment of economic migrants – have long since made that impossible. There are no Trump Trails in Lewis, as there might be in Ireland. Cruise liners full of American tourists arrive and leave without any knowledge of the close connection to the White House. It is something that exists but is neither celebrated nor denounced.

Similarly, nobody can deny the authenticity of Trump’s connection to Scotland or the possibility that it is something, however deeply concealed, which actually matters to him. The primary purpose of his visit is to dedicate a second golf course and a garden to the memory of his Macleod mother. Maybe just this once, we should cut Domhnall Iain Trump a bit of slack and let the occasion pass.

Who knows? There might even be a road to repentance.