It has been revealed that Peter Mandelson urged John Swinney to play on Donald Trump’s Scottish roots to help secure a good UK trade deal. Herald columnist Rosemary Goring asks why the old country is held in such affection by many Americans.

Even dragons, it is said, have a weak spot. In The Hobbit, when Bilbo Baggins crept into Smaug’s lair, he noticed a small unprotected spot on the dragon’s breast, “as bare as a snail out of its shell”. Knowing where he was vulnerable to attack gave Bilbo and his allies a priceless advantage, which they put to good use.

In the case of Donald Trump, who bears many similarities to the fire-breathing, treasure-hoarding, egocentric and self-satisfied Smaug, the soft spot in his armoury is his Scottish ancestry. Mention his Gaelic-speaking mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who came from the Isle of Lewis, and he is liable to grow dewy-eyed, taking on the demeanour of a man who hears the distant sound of bagpipes playing the Skye boat song.

It was Peter Mandelson, when he was the UK’s ambassador to the US, who sought to exploit this chink in the president’s armour. Shortly before Trump was due to visit Scotland last summer for the opening of The MacLeod, his new Aberdeenshire golf course, Mandelson had a video call with First Minister John Swinney. During that conversation, a transcript of which has recently been released, Mandelson stressed how crucial it was that Scotland engage with the US, and the American president in particular, to help reach key UK trade goals, including on whisky.

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The transcript records that Mandelson “set out his understanding that the US president placed great store by his Scottish connections and that the UK government believed a Scottish dimension to the US/UK relationship was highly desirable.”

In other words, as anglers might say, he wanted Swinney to guddle the president as if he were a trout. A couple of days later, when the First Minister met Trump he presented him with archive documents about his mother. This, Swinney said, “deeply touched” the president.

What might these documents have been? A framed birth certificate? A record of Mary’s emigration to the US in 1930 at the age of 18? Who knows. What we do know, however, is that the American president considers the modest house in the crofting village of Tong, near Stornoway, as the place where his own story of meteoric success originated.

Admittedly, when visiting Tong with his sister in 2008, at which point he was still a reality TV host, he spent little more than a nanosecond in the ancestral home. It would seem he didn’t want to dwell on just how humble Mary MacLeod’s beginnings had been.

Nevertheless, as Mandelson recognised, whenever you play the Scotland card with Trump you are pressing at an open door. Something about his Scottish heritage touches a sentimental streak in his psyche, making it a bond he is eager to acknowledge.

Actor Karen Gillan at Tartan Week (Image: PA)

In this he is far from unique among his fellow Americans. Perhaps, in fact, I should say his fellow North Americans, since Canadians are equally keen to claim links with the old country. This is true even if their antecedents left these shores in the 17th or 18th centuries, rather than, as in Trump’s case, less than 100 years ago.

Wherever you travel in America, there are reminders of Scotland and the influence of the diaspora on American culture. Look at a map and you’ll find 20 towns called Glasgow and several named after Edinburgh, Dundee, Inverness, and many, many others. Added to which, from Arizona to Florida, Montana to New England, there’s a proliferation of people called Robertson, Mackintosh, Thomson, Scott and other fixtures of the Scottish telephone directory, not to mention the good old Borders name of Nixon.

And, as is the case all across the world, those who revel in their Caledonian roots are in some ways conspicuously more Scottish than those of us who live here. For that reason a friend, who is a kilt salesman, spends months travelling from state to state, visiting Caledonian and Scottish Heritage societies and associations where Scots-Americans celebrate their peaty roots. Photos from these jolly-looking gatherings, which include Highland Balls and Highland Games and Burns Suppers, often show members in full Highland gear, the men in kilts, with sporrans and sgian dhus, and the women dressed like Flora MacDonald. There’s more tartan on display than you’ll find at the House of Bruar.

For centuries, Scots-Americans have clung to what they regard as their homeland, no matter how impoverished the lives of their ancestors, or how unjustly treated they were by the state or their landlords or employers. For the same reason that Trump’s mother and seven other members of her family left for the US and Canada - namely that they could see no future for themselves in the Outer Hebrides - the vast majority of Scots who emigrated did so to escape poverty or to seek better opportunities. The courage and determination this entailed is in part what their descendants are honouring, recognising the struggle they faced to establish a new life.

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Recent upbeat depictions of Scotland have helped to raise awareness among the Scots-American fraternity of their rich if chequered history. With the exception of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, which has turned the Jacobite era into the backdrop for escapist romance, none has been more influential than the historian Arthur Herman’s scholarly work, The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots'  Invention of the Modern World. This flattering analysis set us on a pedestal, a rare and giddy experience for a nation that prefers to talk itself down. How typical, indeed, that it took an American to bring our brilliance to our attention.

As well as the abundance of Caledonian societies, the most public demonstration of America’s deep-rooted connection to Scotland is without doubt the much-vaunted Tartan Week, which takes place every April in New York.

What began as a day-long event in 1999 has since turned into a week-long extravaganza, featuring more Highland dancers and bagpipers than could be squeezed into George Square. To watch the Tartan Week parade wind its way through the canyons of Manhattan is to be reminded of what we have in common with a country that, at the moment, feels increasingly alien. Showcasing and strengthening the ties that bind us can surely only be a good thing.

Yet when it comes to Donald Trump, his Scottish ancestry is something that I would prefer not to – ahem – trumpet, deal or no deal.

Rosemary Goring is a columnist, historical novelist, and author of books on Scottish history. Her latest is Exile: The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots

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