Trump set to head to Scotland for golf during UK visit

Donald Trump is expected to head to Scotland after his visit to London on 13 July to play golf with a high quality professional golfer or possibly a member of the royal family.

The president is being offered a range of low handicap golfers as a part of a UK government bid to make the visit as pleasurable as possible for him.

Trump owns two golf courses in Scotland, and his visit to the UK following a Nato summit will give him a chance to relax in the surroundings that give him greatest pleasure. British officials have recognised he is a serious golfer and will need an expert opponent to keep him entertained.

The trip is likely to include a meeting with the Queen, but at the same time efforts are being made to ensure that he does not encounter a series of protests in London. One option will be for the president to meet Theresa May outside London, such as at the prime minister’s rural retreat in Chequers.

Details about the trip are a long way from completion, and it is being stressed that the offer of a full state visit for the president still stands for next year.

But with the Queen now in her 90s, it is expected that Buckingham Palace will only book two state visits a year from now on, so the president will have to make a decision relatively soon whether he wants to take one of the slots potentially available.

The July visit could come at a point of maximum tension between the European Union and the US over how to handle the fallout from the US decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal, which was signed in 2015.

The US has threatened to impose secondary sanctions on any EU company that is still trading with Iran. The EU is probing the state department to see if there is any chance the US will provide carve-outs for some specific EU firms with investments in Iran.

Many of the US sanctions will just be starting to bite at the time of the Trump visit, providing a tense political backdrop. The UK has stuck with France and Germany in insisting that Iran is not in breach of the terms of the nuclear deal, even if they have other sharp disagreements with Tehran’s behaviour in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

Few European diplomats are expecting the US to provide any carve-outs to specific EU firms, pointing to Monday’s hardline speech by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. The speech set a series of preconditions for the lifting of US sanctions that would amount to a change in regime.

The tone of Theresa May’s meeting with Trump will also be set by whether the president decides to use the Nato meeting to acknowledge the progress being made by EU states to increase defence spending to reach the target of 2% of GDP, or instead to point to the countries that are not on target to reach the target. The UK is one of five countries that has met the target.