Preventing Trump visit was simply impossible

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the East Kilbride News.

The dust has now settled following Donald Trump’s visit to the United Kingdom which included a weekend spent at his glamorous hotel resort in Turnberry, South Ayrshire.

Protests formed the backdrop but citizens here invoking their right to express their views would have been long forgotten about by the time Trump boarded Air Force One in Helsinki, Finland following that press conference with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

There was much debate about whether or not Trump should have been allowed to visit these shores – but what was the alternative?

It would have caused a massive diplomatic crisis had the UK Government told Trump they were not prepared to roll out the red carpet.

If the ‘special relationship’ really does exist, then a decision of that nature would have almost certainly tainted it.

And if you fail to welcome Trump, you have to pull up the drawbridge for some of the other characters who have flown into Britain in recent years, surely?

Should the visit have included tea with The Queen? Not in my view.

Trump will have left Britain in no doubt that opinion on him here is as split as it is in his own country.

He is a deeply divisive figure and his initial comments where he sided with Putin rather than his own security services over Russian meddling during the 2016 election – he did row back on them a couple of days later – added more fuel to a fire raging thanks to odious policies such as separating immigrant children from their parents at the border.

Quite what happens next with Trump is anybody’s guess. Colin Paterson