Lesley Riddoch: After deadly US violence, Trump must not be allowed into Scotland

DESPITE the brute force exercised last night outside and inside the US Capitol Building in Washington DC - American democracy is painfully rebuilding itself today and proving more robust than the Chancer in Chief ever thought possible.

After a day of incitement that resulted in four deaths and a flurry of resignations by staff, the truly repellent 45th President of the USA has been given the perfect parting gift - and it’s not Twitter’s feeble 24-hour ban.

Even Trump must accept that his crass attempt to fix the election result in a thuggish phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state so appalled swithering voters that it handed Joe Biden a Democratic Senate majority considered impossible a few short months ago.

Thanks to Trump’s bullying mania, confirmed beyond all doubt by his public incitement of supporters who stormed their own parliament yesterday, the next four years will see the Biden/Harris White House work with, not against Congress to reduce inequality, cut gun ownership, tackle climate change and Covid with strategy, urgency and respect for science.

And beyond inciting more riots - risky since legislatures and State Guards across the States are now prepared for him - or provoking removal from office to play the martyr - dodgy since that just brings on the lawsuits - Trump can do nothing about it.

Worse is to come. He may not care about losing the support of leading Republicans including his own Vice President Mike Pence. But on January 20, when Joe Biden is formally inaugurated, Trump will effectively be declared the world’s biggest loser. And we all know his temperament well enough by now, to know that label is the only thing he really fears. So maybe it’s not surprising he apparently made plans to skip the humiliation, the taunts, the lawsuits and the sight of his triumphant opponents on every TV station by skipping the country altogether.

And where would a man like Donald Trump - sentimental, mawkish, self-deluding and utterly impervious to public opinion - where would such a man go?

Why wouldn’t he stick two fingers up at the new guys, show the world who’s (still) boss and head "home" to the "auld country" for a few soothing rounds of golf at Turnberry?

The idea Trump might be planning to land Air Force One at Prestwick on Biden’s inauguration day, sounded ridiculous at first.

But if he’s still in place by January 20 - and today that is a big if - the trip may still make perfect sense to this discredited and deranged man.

There’s just one problem for Trump.

He can’t come in.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon: We saw Donald Trump inciting insurrection in Washington last night

Even before his public orchestration of violence witnessed on every TV channel, even before his attempt to bully an election official into giving him another 11 thousand votes in Georgia, even before talk about his immediate removal from office by some Republicans, Donald Trump was barred from Scotland by a First Minister simply applying the legal ban on inward travel to Scotland for non-essential purposes during the Covid pandemic.

Astonishingly though, some folk south of the Border managed to take exception to Nicola’s "no exceptions" stance.

Yesterday I found myself on LBC radio, "defending" the First Minister.

Who is Nicola Sturgeon to think she can ban the mighty president of the United States?

Why should a successful (yer having a laugh) international business man be prevented from travelling wherever he likes?

The objections were already out of kilter with the world’s mood but today, in the wake of deadly violence in Washington DC incited by Donald Trump, they seem embarrassingly naïve and utterly wrong. As ever though, petty objections mask deeper political divisions.

Tory politicians once lined up beside this thoroughly discredited president and the Prime Minister often boasted of Trump’s friendship, ripping up devolution to meet his demands for a trade deal. Today these men and women are shamed.

And Nicola Sturgeon’s stance makes perfect sense.

More than that.

READ MORE: Donald Trump should be banned from UK after Capitol scenes, Priti Patel told

Janey Godley’s straight-talking sign held aloft all those years ago at Turnberry was positively prophetic. After all, the long years of incendiary remarks, regressive policies, crony appointments, corruption, climate-destroying spending decisions and incitement to violence all still lay ahead.

Actually, it would almost be worth seeing Trump make that whole cumbersome transatlantic trip, just to witness his final comeuppance. Just as tax evasion finally floored Al Capone, it would be deliciously fitting if the Donald’s final Presidential act was halted by a law-abiding Prestwick official.

By Scots - not his ain folk after all but, in the main, bitter opponents who’ve learned a lot about ourselves, our values and our ill-fitting place in the union by watching others kow-tow and grovel.

During the long years of Trump’s presidency and Johnson’s ascendancy, as England and the USA have veered together towards populism, isolationism and protectionism - a transatlantic Tweedledum and Tweedledee - Scotland has watched, reflected and inched steadily away in the opposite direction.

Yes, we are still stuck on the same seat as "our" fawning Trump-supporting PM. But we’re hinging off the side - leaning away politically as far as we possibly can.

Let’s face it. If Trump had been planning to touch down near Cambridge not Glasgow, his reception would have been rather different - until the events of yesterday.

Exceptions would have been made, red carpets rolled out and an outgoing President treated with much deference if not any real respect - even as he tried to twist the empty "special relationship" one more time to snub the Democrat in the White House and the American people who elected him fairly and squarely.

READ MORE: Trump supporters storm Washington DC as US descends into chaos

The hostility to Nicola Sturgeon’s intention to ban Donald Trump by some LBC listeners, now rings hollow but still speaks volumes. It seems south of the Border, no one expects a British leader to stand up to abusive American presidents except in festive re-runs of Love Actually. No one expects rules to be created, without fast-track exemptions and short-cuts for Special Ones. No one expects the self-proclaimed "leader of the free world" to face restriction of any kind - especially not by the leader of a small devolved government without powers over foreign policy.

Therein lies its simple beauty.

The First Minister’s simple statement of lockdown law has shone an uncomfortably bright light on Tory Britain, where cash is king, rules exist only for the little people and Britain’s supine foreign policy means Johnson has been Trump’s poodle to the bitter end.

But for many progressive English folk, the reasoning behind our First Minister’s stance has been good to hear from a political leader - even if it’s not one of their own.

Of course, even before the events of yesterday, Donald Trump couldn’t be allowed to visit Scotland - for a whole host of reasons.

Firstly symbolic - if one infamous man can flaunt the law, Scotland’s strong compliance with Covid rules will drift just as it did in England after Dominic Cummings’s solidarity-sapping trip to Barnard Castle. If wealth and power can visibly bend rules, the public will think compliance is a mug’s game.

That cannae be allowed to happen.

There are practical considerations too. Donald Trump doesn’t come on his own, not even as a shamed president forced out of office. His 2019 visit cost taxpayers £3 million for three days – a four day visit in 2018 cost £14m. Why on earth should we spend any money protecting a man, who cares nothing for the safety of others - not even his own supporters?

And finally, there are the diplomatic reasons. Joe Biden is the next American president. What possible motive could any country have for welcoming his arch rival, a pathetic husk of a man fit only for criminal investigation? Why welcome a loser like Trump on the cusp of a new political era in which Scotland needs friends and open minds in the Oval Office as we head towards indyref2?

So, the burn of emotion over Trump’s proposed trip is understandable. In normal circumstances, I’d imagine hundreds of thousands of folk would be heading to Prestwick next fortnight to make their feelings about this man crystal clear.

But understand the real power of this moment.

Donald Trump’s final piece of arrogance has been blocked by the application of the law - the product of jaw-jaw, not war-war.

An act of democracy will finally see off the King of Demagoguery, if he dares to travel here.

And at the start of a tough New Year, for one flickering moment at least, justice prevails.