U.S. Presidential Candidate Donald Trump gestures during a visit to his Scottish golf course at Turnberry. REUTERS PHOTO/RUSSELL CHEYNE
BY MICHAEL HOLDEN Reuters
Britain’s top court will decide on Wednesday whether to back U.S. Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump’s bid to stop wind farms being built near his luxury Scottish golf resort amid a growing spat with politicians in his mother’s homeland.
The decision comes after a week in which his call to deny Muslims entry to the United States has resulted in his being stripped of two Scottish honorary positions, prompted a record petition calling for him to be banned from Britain, and drawn a rebuke from Prime Minister David Cameron and others.
Trump said: “I have done so much for Scotland, including building Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, which has received the highest accolades, and is what many believe to be one of the greatest golf courses anywhere in the world.”
“The UK politicians should be thanking me instead of pandering to political correctness,” he added in an article for Scotland’s Press and Journal newspaper.
Trump wants to sink a plan by Scotland’s government, run by the Scottish National Party, to erect 11 offshore turbines off Blackdog in Aberdeenshire on the northeastern coast of Scotland because he believes they will spoil the view from the nearby greens of his golf complex.
The government argues the $350 million European Offshore Wind Deployment Center would boost the local economy and power 49,000 homes.
Trump has already lost a series of battles in Britain’s lower courts and his last chance to block the plans rests with the Supreme Court, the country’s highest judicial body.
“Mr. Trump does not want a wind farm 1 km (half a mile) away from his golf course,” his lawyer John Campbell said when the matter went before the court in October.
The case hinges on prosaic rather than aesthetic, environmental or political issues: Trump’s team are disputing the validity of the Scottish government’s approval of the wind farm and its interpretation of the 1989 Electricity Act.
Trump’s representatives in Britain said they would not comment until after the judgment.
It is not the first time the tycoon, who speaks proudly of being half-Scottish and whose Gaelic-speaking mother hailed from Stornoway on the northern Isle of Lewis, has come into conflict with local lawmakers.
It took nine planning applications and a lengthy public inquiry before Trump defeated neighbors, environmentalists and online campaigners to win approval for his course in 2010, the first phase of a 750 million pound ($1.13 billion) project.
Back then, he had Scotland’s government on his side, overturning objections to grant approval for the project.
But the politicians’ support for the wind farms in 2013 has soured the relationship with Trump, who has said the Scottish government is “committing financial suicide” and that its proposals will end tourism in Scotland.
After his controversial presidential campaign comments about Muslims and immigrants, Trump’s former friends in Scotland are turning their backs on him.
Last week Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University said it would revoke an honorary degree it awarded Trump in 2010, and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stripped him of his role as a business ambassador for Scotland.