There is a tendency in certain Scottish nationalist circles to obsess about the Scottishness of vegetables. If a bag of potatoes fails to have a Scottish flag on it letters will be sent to the National and the possibility of a unilateral declaration of independence will be investigated to save the tatties from a fate worse than being eaten otherwise known as being described as British.
Someone with a name like Faf de Klerk or Naas Botha may sing the just learned words of Flower of Scotland because of a distant relation from Achiltibuie that he is unable to find on the map and of who he was unaware until a week ago, but he too is as Scottish as Humza Yousaf when he pulls on the Scottish rugby shirt.
But one man is never Scottish.
Angus Robertson may have had a German mother and have been born in Wimbledon. Lesley Riddoch may have been born in Wolverhampton and grew up in Northern Ireland, but apparently having a mother whose first language was Gaelic from the Isle of Lewis does not a Scotsman make.
Donald Trump has just become only the second President of the United States to win non-consecutive terms after Grover Cleveland. Poor Grover was descended from English ancestors so you would think the Scottish nationalist potato worriers would be going on about the first Scottish president to win non-consecutive terms, but strangely they are silent about the Donald’s Scottishness even if it’s hard to think of a more Scottish name than Donald except perhaps Humza.
Why the horror when potatoes are called British when they are, while no objections at all are made when Donald Trump is not called Scottish which he is? Joe Biden based his Irishness on an ancestor who moved to America in the 1840s. Since then Joe had ancestors from everywhere else including heaven forfend England to the extent that his gene “Kelly” was liable to drown in the rain of Englishness.
But Donald Trump is half Scottish. He does not need to invent a new tartan. It may not be quite as Scottish as the Yousaf tartan, but Macleod is rather more Scottish than either de Klerk or Botha.
The reason of course why we have to ask Donald where’s your Scottishness rather than where’s your troosers is because the average Scottish nationalist as well as the average BBC journalist and Labour MP is this morning making a journey up the river into the heart of darkness where they meet Colonel Trump and find “The Horror, the Horror” that he has been elected President of the United States.
Trump may have more flaws than a lump of glass pretending to be a diamond, but his ability to drive the Left to distraction is absolutely flawless.
I think that Trump may be rather good for the US economy. He may be rather helpful to Britain as at least he doesn’t hate us. He will support Israel and be very good indeed at opposing both terrorism and mass migration. We will have to wait and see how he deals with Ukraine.
The free world faces two threats. The external threat comes from the alliance of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and other jihadists and malcontents. It is important that these are detached from each other and contained if not defeated. Israel has done more to do this in the past year than anyone else and must be encouraged and supported until it finishes the job entirely.
China can be tempted away because its primary interest is economic and because China will be pragmatic. Trump can perhaps make a deal that contains North Korea while protecting Taiwan by making clear that any Chinese aggression would have economic consequences.
Russia needs to be brought back to the fold of normality whereby you don’t go around poisoning people nor invading other countries. Normalisation of economic relations should be the prize offered to Russia for behaving itself.
The free world faces an internal threat that is at least as great as the external threat. The USA has for some decades been importing people indiscriminately without knowing who they are and what their intentions. The character of the USA has changed beyond all recognition much more than any country in Europe. There are parts of the USA where the majority language is no longer English.
But a country is not a landmass it is the people who have lived there over the centuries. You cannot radically change the nature of that people and expect the country to remain what it was.
The free world has become weak and decadent, obsessing about nonsense like men becoming women, apologising for our history, colonialism and slavery reparations. If you want an apology for colonialism then ditch all the computers, mobile phones and cars that colonialism brought you.
Perhaps President Trump can begin reversing some of this, because it may be in the decades ahead that we will need to be much stronger in order to defeat China, which is rising like Japan in the 1930s.
China does not apologise for anything and it does not have mass migration or asylum seekers. It does not obsess about gender and it is homogenous and united in a way that the United States no longer is.
China would be willing to take a million casualties in a war because it would not even notice the loss. The USA was defeated at the Battle of Mogadishu after losing 18 lives. It is not serious. It means that the free world can barely even compete.
Trump is a mad highlander charging the redcoats at the Battle of Prestonpans in his underwear. It’s a crazy way to fight a battle against muskets, but as the redcoats saw Trump getting closer waving his claymore you can understand why they wanted to run away.
The danger of this way of being a president is that it can all go horribly wrong. It’s not Lincoln, it’s not FDR and it’s not Eisenhower, but nor is it weak. It is the most Scottish way of being a president even if the SNP disowns Trump. It’s the presidency as Highland charge and Trump might just triumph over all his enemies. We need him to.
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