LIAM Fox had the audacity to try and belittle the feelings and the determination of his fellow citizens in a television interview when he said the protesters were an embarrassment to themselves and not the government. Really Liam? Are you quite sure there?

Nearly 200,000 people nationwide took to the streets to do the job you and your colleagues should be doing, that is condemning the tyrant Trump and making it crystal clear to him that his distorted and morally bankrupt beliefs are not welcome here. But alas, the last thing Saint Theresa or any of her government were going to do was openly rebuke or challenge him, even when his behaviour at the outset of this cringeworthy visit was appalling, and left one wondering exactly who our enemies really are.

Liam Fox is another of the Brexit opportunists with an eye for the upcoming leadership challenge that will surely happen once May’s fantasy white paper is rejected both by the EU and her own parliament, so he is content to appease this behaviour as it is aimed not at him but his leader, and serves to deflect the blame on to her. It is so convenient for the likes of Fox for Trump to add May to his list of those to abuse, and to serve up the verbal and psychological beatings he metes out to the weak and the vulnerable. Notice how he is unable or unwilling to behave in this way when in the company of fellow tyrants, and how he reacts to those who do show no fear when intimidated, vis a vis Angela Merkel or Nicola Sturgeon.

Even though he has been shielded from most of the huge outpourings of feelings shown in the demonstrations held nationwide, he will no doubt have been watching Fox and Friends where they will have been shown. Apparently he has made a comment regarding the Baby Trump balloon to the effect that it made him feel unwelcome – job done there then! I hope he does see images of the demonstrations and gets the message loud and clear that this country, and in particular, his supposed “motherland”, has no time for him or his obscene rantings, his divisive policies and his general desire to create mayhem anywhere he goes on a whim. I hope he realises that we do not want to be treated as another deal to be done, or an opportunity to be exploited. We need to make it clear we want to be a society that is all-inclusive, free from bigotry, hatred, xenophobia, racism and all the other beliefs this deranged individual espouses!

Have your most expensive rounds of golf, and get on your big jet and fly out of our country, and please do not even think of coming back again. Just think what the £5 million-plus that has been spent guarding this man could have done for hospital equipment or for caring for our needy. Will this be a lesson to May that Trump can never be trusted? Watch out for his tweets that will no doubt flow once he is on Air force One regarding the trade deal that may or may not be on offer. My bet is he will renege on it in a heartbeat. Then what, Liam and Theresa?

Ade Hegney
Helensburgh

IT was surely unwise of Nicola Sturgeon to snub Donald Trump the way she did. At the moment, Donald Trump is the US President. It can’t be politic to alienate America at any time, and Trump can be a vindictive man. That said, I don’t believe that in reality he’s anything like the “misogynistic”, “homophobic”, “fascist”, etc portrait the far left have painted of him. Ideologues use words not to describe reality but to create it. They’re trying to get their propaganda machine – the biggest, most organised, and most dishonest in the world – to marginalise Trump in people’s moral perceptions, their one and only real reason being that they see him and his constituency stopping the Frankfurt School’s “Long March [to Marxism] through culture and the institutions” in its historically inevitable tracks.

It concerns me at times to see left-wing (and occasionally, right-wing) ideology replacing genuine understanding of humanity in some National articles. There are more subtly necessary things going on in life than are dreamt of in hidebound, tunnel-visioned Marxist-feminist ideology. If that gets to rule, it will wither our human options and our real possibilities for a better world.

Politics, to succeed, sometimes must use the art of compromise. Nicola Sturgeon should realise that’s the business she’s in, and adopt some of Theresa May’s shifting pragmatism, hiding her real views – two-faced and distasteful though that is – when, for all our sakes, she has to.

Ian McQueen
Dumfries

THE behaviour of Donald Trump and Theresa May is reminiscent of six-year-olds who fall out and make up on a daily basis.

If anyone thought that the government’s handling of Brexit was the height of farce, they saw it hitting a new high during Donald Trump’s visit.

Friday the 13th was indeed a Black Friday when Theresa May’s precious United Kingdom was treated as a joke by the US President and she and her pathetic, divided government allowed it to continue unabated.

How any Prime Minister could accept the barrage of criticism, insults and denials from a visiting head of state without a robust response defies understanding.

Theresa May would have been justified in following Donald Trump’s own example, when he threatened to back out of his meeting with Kim Jong Un, to bring some sanity to the situation.

There was not a single minister able to stand up to Donald Trump and tell him that he was welcome in our country but that we did not insult our guests and expected no less from them.

Struggling to find something positive to say, BBC news told us that the highlight of the visit for Donald Trump was having his photo taken with the Queen to hang in the Oval Office. In hindsight that appears to be the only obvious success resulting from his visit.

It is obvious that the US has no respect whatsoever for this government and realises that with the aid of the Brexiteers the UK is there for the taking when it comes to trade deals.

Theresa May’s white paper has very little chance of passing through Westminster and becoming an agreement with the EU in the time left before Brexit Day; as negotiations are proceeding on the basis that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, there is a real danger of the the UK leaving the EU on March 29 without any deal being in place.

Scotland must withdraw from Westminster’s evolving disaster as soon as possible and certainly before the UK leaves the EU.

John Jamieson
South Queensferry

DEAR Linda Majors (Letters, July 13), thank you for sharing your views with us. However, if you should ever decide to change your mind and visit our mean-spirited little country, do try and come to visit me or some other of our other worthy contributors to these pages.

I am sure that we will be able to convince you that, while we may be a little country – and by the way, I appreciate your recognising it as such and not merely classing us as a region of Greater Britain as so many of your compatriots do – we have a generosity of spirit and knowledge and understanding of world affairs which I think it fair to say surpasses that which can be found in many much larger countries.

George M Mitchell
Dunblane

SCOTLAND does not grab children from their parents and put them in cages. Scotland does not lock people in a Guantanamo-type prison for years without trial. Scotland does not torture innocent people. Scots do not gun down thousands of their fellow citizens every year. Scotland does not invade other countries to force regime change. Scotland does not charge to heal the sick.

So I for one will be quite relived if Linda Majors of California, as a supporter of Trump and his obnoxious policies, never visits our “mean-spirited little country” and persuades her like-minded acquaintances to do the same.

Richard Walthew
Duns