Anti-Trump protests make me embarrassed to be Scottish

Telegraph

25-07-2025

During a previous visit to Scotland by Donald Trump, the late comedian Janey Godley caused a stir by holding up a placard describing the president as a c-word.
To many this appeared vulgar and offensive, and just a little lacking in imagination. But to many within Scotland, this insult soared into the stratosphere of Wildean pithiness, revealing Godley's genius, courage and – this is Scotland, after all – her downright goodness as a human being.
To many Scots, however, the knowledge that Godley's insult was being broadcast across the globe and would be seen by our American friends was a source of embarrassment. Name-calling? That's the apotheosis of political satire in Scotland? Really?
Today there will be more protests at the start of the president's five-day visit to Scotland, which will take in his two golf courses here. If only there were a way of explaining to our American cousins that such protests are less about the president himself or his policies, or even about the contempt in which the protesters hold the US citizens who voted for him last year. They are about one thing and one thing only: the protesters themselves.
The Trump visit is a public relations opportunity for the likes of Scottish Green MSPs and activists, as well as a hodgepodge of the usual people: the climate change, refugee rights, trans rights and, naturally, anti-Israel activists.
Perhaps they imagine that their earnest sloganising and placard-waving will have some influence on the president himself – in which case, it's disturbing that they harbour such ignorance of the nature of their hated target. More likely, they probably believe that their antics will impress and attract their fellow Scots, although to what end who can tell?
When the president has dusted off his golf clubs and set off home across the Atlantic, the chief aim of the protesters will have been achieved: they will feel good about themselves. They will still retain just a modicum of the righteous indignation that motivated them to rehearse, memorise and perform the weekend's radical slogans, but the feeling will be one of overwhelming self-satisfaction that they stuck it to The Man and – more importantly – that they were captured on video doing so.
For the sane majority of Scots and their fellow Brits, the visit by an American president – any American president – is a valuable opportunity to forge a deeper friendship and to develop new trade, political and military ties. Having Trump could be particularly advantageous to the UK, given the uncertainty in the global economy over the US administration's threatened and actual tariff regime.
Britain has managed so far to escape the worst of the policy's impacts and even secured a comprehensive US-UK trade deal. There is far more to be gained from treating the president with respect than with derision.
But that's not how our domestic army of middle-class, virtue-signalling, keffiyeh-adorned protesters see things. Their need to be seen protesting Trump – and it is a need, not a preference – simply must be sated. During the president's first term, even the House of Commons surrendered to this performative self-indulgence, with the then Speaker, John Bercow, shredding his obligations to political neutrality and announcing that he would not authorise the use of Westminster Hall for Trump to address both houses of Parliament – even before such a request was made.
The announcement had its intended effect, not so much in its rebuke to the president (even if he had been aware of the Speaker's snub) but in the thousands of Twitter users praising Bercow as 'progressive'.
Consider this question: were this weekend's protesters unable to share memes and videos of their activities on social media, if the TV news cameras didn't cover their activities or invite them to explain their personal animosity towards the president, would they bother to turn out at all? If a protest happens and nobody notices, does it make a sound?
Fortunately for the semi-skimmed oat milk latte crowd, such a scenario is unlikely. They will have their few seconds of notoriety on the TV news bulletins and across Twitter/X and Instagram. They will not seek to try to understand why a man like Donald Trump was elected in the first place, or why their preferred candidate was so humiliatingly rejected. It is enough for them to be angry – or appear to be angry – at the president's very presence in their country.
But a plea to all my American friends: please don't assume that these protests represent the whole, or even a large minority, of Scotland. They do not. They're just embarrassing attention-seekers that we all must put up with in a modern democracy. Like toddlers, they'll eventually get tired of their own tantrums and have to be put to bed, leaving the grown-ups to have an adult conversation in their absence.