
Donald Trump seen golfing at start of five-day private visit to Scotland
The president headed to his Trump Turnberry resort in the west of Scotland – which he bought in 2014 – after arriving in the country on Friday night.
Advertisement
On Saturday morning he was seen on the golf course there, wearing a white cap and driving a golf buggy.
Ahead of that, a large number of police and military personnel have been spotted searching the grounds at the venue in South Ayrshire.
Various road closures have been put in place, with limited access for both locals and members of the media.
US President Donald Trump steers a golf cart at his Trump Turnberry golf course in South Ayrshire (Robert Perry/PA)
Mr Trump is staying at Turnberry for the start of a five-day private visit to Scotland which will see him have talks with both British prime minister Keir Starmer and Scottish first minister John Swinney.
Advertisement
A meeting has also been scheduled for him to talk about trade with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday.
A major security operation is under way for US President Donald Trump's five-day private visit to Scotland (Robert Perry/PA)
With no talks apparently scheduled for Saturday, the president – a well-known golf enthusiast – appears to be free to play the famous Turnberry course.
However, protests have been planned, with opponents of Mr Trump expected to gather in both Edinburgh and Aberdeen later on Saturday and the Stop Trump coalition planning what it has described as being a 'festival of resistance'.
As well as visiting Trump Turnberry, Mr Trump will head to Aberdeenshire later in his visit and is expected to open a second course at his golf resort in Balmedie.
Advertisement
As he landed in Ayrshire on Friday, the president took questions from journalists, telling Europe to 'get your act together' on immigration, which he said was 'killing' the continent.
He also praised Mr Starmer, who he described as a 'good man', but added that the prime minister is 'slightly more liberal than I am'.
US President Donald Trump's motorcade on the A77 in Maybole, South Ayrshire (Robert Perry/PA)
Saturday will be the first real test of Police Scotland during the visit as it looks to control the demonstrations in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, as well as any which spring up near to the president's course.
The force has asked for support from others around the UK to bolster officer numbers, with both organisations representing senior officers and the rank-and-file claiming there is likely to be an impact on policing across the country for the duration of the visit.
Advertisement
Before the visit started, Mr Swinney appealed to Scots to protest 'peacefully and within the law'.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Independent
10 minutes ago
- The Independent
Starmer says UK will recognize Palestinian state unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Tuesday the U.K. will recognize a Palestinian state in September – unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza and takes steps toward long-term peace. Starmer called ministers together for a rare summertime Cabinet meeting to discuss the situation in Gaza. He told them that Britain will recognize a state of Palestine before the United Nations General Assembly, 'unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, reaches a ceasefire, makes clear there will be no annexation in the West Bank, and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a two state solution." Britain has long supported the idea of an independent Palestinian state existing alongside Israel, but has said recognition should come as part of a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict. Pressure to formally recognize Palestinian statehood has mounted since French President Emmanuel Macron announced that his country will become the first major Western power to recognize a Palestinian state in September.


The Independent
10 minutes ago
- The Independent
UK will recognise Palestinian state in September unless Israel ends ‘appalling situation' in Gaza, Starmer vows
Keir Starmer and his senior ministers have agreed to recognise to recognise a Palestinian state in September unless Israel ends its starvation tactics in Gaza. The prime minister held an emergency virtual cabinet meeting where he laid out his plan for peace agreed over the weekend with French President Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz. In an ultimatum to Benjamin Netanyahu's government, he used the threat of recognising Palestine in September to try to force Israel to change tactics. A readout from the cabinet meeting stated: 'The Prime Minister said it had been this Government's longstanding position that recognition of a Palestinian state was an inalienable right of the Palestinian people and that we would recognise a Palestinian state as part of a process to peace and a two state solution. 'He said that because of the increasingly intolerable situation in Gaza and the diminishing prospect of a peace process towards a two state solution, now was the right time to move this position forward. 'He said that the UK will recognise the state of Palestine in September, before UNGA, unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, reaches a ceasefire, makes clear there will be no annexation in the West Bank, and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a two state solution.' Pressure had been mounting on Sir Keir to recognise Palestine as a state, but the decision to put the ball in the Israeli government's court was a compromise to satisfy two competing factions in his cabinet. Senior Cabinet members who support plans to recognise a Palestinian state include deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, energy secretary Ed Miliband and foreign secretary David Lammy. Mr Lammy is at a conference in New York discussing recognising Palestine as a state where he is due to speak. But on the other side chancellor Rachel Reeves, tech secretary Peter Kyle, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden, who have been officers of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), were worried recognition would 'reward Hamas'. Politically Sir Keir had been helped by Donald Trump when they met in Scotland on Monday, where the US president said he did not object to the prime minister taking a position on state recognition. This undermined the US State Department's opposition to the move, expressed angrily by secretary of state Marco Rubio last week, when President Macron announced France would recognise a Palestinian state. At home Sir Keir has been threatened by the creation of Jeremy Corbyn's new party which includes the former Gaza independents who unseated senior Labour MPs at the last election and came close to defeating Ms Mahmood and health secretary Wes Streeting. Added to that more than 250 MPs from nine different parties have called for Palestine to be recognised as a state. This included more than 90 of the new Labour MPs elected last year.


The Independent
10 minutes ago
- The Independent
Why has it been so difficult for Britain to recognise the state of Palestine?
Keir Starmer's determination to recognise the state of Palestine begs a simple question. Not so much 'Why?' – for decades, a two-state solution that would see a Palestinian homeland established in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem has been the policy of successive UK governments, and one that was voted for, overwhelmingly, in the Commons 11 years ago. But, rather, how today's announcement following an emergency meeting of the Cabinet, that the British government – exasperated by the ongoing situation in Gaza and the dwindling prospects of a two-state solution with Israel – will formally recognise Palestine in September, could have been quite so long in the making. Britain has played a pivotal role in the pre-history of the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict, starting with the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The then-British foreign secretary's letter to Lord Rothschild promising support for a 'national home for the Jewish people' set our seal on a future Israeli state. While many Palestinians understandably see the Declaration as the root of all their travails, it was intended as a classic diplomatic fudge. It did not actually specify that it would mean a Jewish state in what was then still a division of the Ottoman Empire, but which would soon be under British control following General Allenby's victory over the Turks in the First World War. Moreover, Balfour promised that 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine' – which is a quaint way of describing the existing, and then overwhelmingly Arab, population of Palestine. Nor did it say how this protection would be achieved. But none of this alters the fact that, more than a century later, this proviso is the the Balfour Declaration's great unfinished business. Fast forward to May 1948. The declaration of an independent state of Israel by its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, following the hasty abandonment of territory mandated to British control in 1920 by the League of Nations, and coupled with the Israeli army's successful defence against immediate invasion by five neighbouring Arab states, left the new nation in control of 78 per cent of what had once been British-administered Mandatory Palestine. The Balfour Declaration – along with the United Nations decision to divide the territory into two states, one Arab and one Jewish – would prove pivotal in creating a conflict that still scars the Middle East. But it is subsequent events that explain why formal recognition of an independent, sovereign state of Palestine has still not yet happened. For more than half a century, Western governments – Britain included – have said that there should be a Palestinian state that encompasses Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But in 1967, when the Six Day War broke out with its neighbours, Israel seized the former territory from Egypt and the latter two others from Jordan. The subsequent UN Resolution 242 called for Israel to withdraw in return for recognition by Arab states – but neither the pullback nor the recognition ever came to pass. At that point in time, Palestinians still hankered after sovereignty over the whole of historic 'Palestine' – including what had already been the state of Israel for almost 20 years, and from which more than 700,000 Palestinians had been forced to flee, in a displacement and dispossession known as the Nakba, meaning 'catastrophe' in Arabic. Israel, far from withdrawing from the territorial gains made during conflicts, has set up settlements, meaning that at least 620,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Several of the most extreme members of the Netanyahu government are eager to resettle Gaza in the same way. In 1988, there was a dramatic change of thinking within the then-Palestinian leadership – it's so-called 'historic compromise'. Led by Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation would confine its aspiration to sovereignty over the territories occupied in 1967. All negotiations that have taken place since then – at Oslo in 1993, at Camp David in 2000, and between Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas as part of a secret realignment plan that was never implemented – have envisaged, to some degree, a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side. Shortly after Arafat's historic compromise, 78 countries recognised the new Palestinian state. Today, the number declaring formal recognition stands at 147. Earlier this month – more than a decade after Sweden became the first EU country to formally acknowledge Palestinian sovereignty, a move followed last year by Ireland, Spain and Norway – the French president Emmanuel Macron became the first leader of a G7 country to promise he will seek to do the same at the UN General Assembly in September. As critics of recognition frequently, and correctly, point out; acknowledging a state of Palestine that includes the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem is essentially notional, since, in the absence of a successful peace process, there is no state to recognise. Though the Palestinian Authority was granted observer status at the United Nations in 2012, along similar lines to that afforded to the Vatican, it has no voting rights. Moreover, the United States has consistently used its veto to block Palestine's full UN membership. As recently as April, the UK abstained in a Security Council resolution vote on the recommendation regarding the admission of Palestine into the UN. Nevertheless, France's move – which paved the way for today's announcement of a road map by Keir Starmer, which is supported by Macron and the German chancellor Friedrich Merz – is not an empty one. It registered growing outrage at the carnage, and the scale of the famine, perpetrated by Israel in Gaza in retaliation for brutal attacks by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took another 251 hostages. The French president is said to have been especially affected by his conversations with Palestinian survivors when he visited Egypt in April. France joining with Saudi Arabia in sponsoring the UN summit currently underway in New York to revive talks into a two-state solution sends a clear political message to Israel's leadership. It is also a reminder that, since 2002, Riyadh has promised to recognise Israel – as Egypt and Jordan have already done – but only if it agrees to a return to pre-1967 borders. Will Britain's belated recognition of a state of Palestine make any difference? It will certainly lend weight and credence to those hoping to change minds in Washington. It would also go some way as an acknowledgement of the UK's historic role and duty in the region. And we can only hope that it might help solve a conflict in which the destruction, killing and starvation in Gaza is but the latest – and direst – consequence.