Rohan Beyts had a mound of Republican red and Democratic blue balloons, puddings with red and blue fruit and a Mexican-themed piñata head of Donald Trump for an election night party at her home, a converted lighthouse on the coast of Aberdeenshire.



Beyts and her small group of friends, activists in the Tripping Up Trump campaign that once marched on his £1bn golf resort in the Scottish county, had been preparing for an emphatic win for Hillary Clinton, not nail-biting tension – nor a shock victory for a man they have come to despise.

As Trump closed in on victory, grabbing key battlegrounds such as Ohio, and pushed the Democrats to unexpectedly close contests in others, she and her friends became increasingly gloomy.

Debra Storr, a former local councillor who played a pivotal role in the short-lived resistance to Trump’s golf resort application eight years ago, lifted her head up from a laptop: “I’ve just had American friends say, ‘How do I emigrate to Scotland?’”

“Shitty, shitty, shitty shit,” she then spat, shell-shocked. “Oh god, we’re in Brexit-land.”

A whisky bottle was opened as Trump’s electoral college tally grew. Beyts sipped at a Nasty Lady cocktail, a new recipe named after Trump’s dismissive putdown of his Democratic opponent.

President-elect Donald Trump. Photograph: ddp USA / Barcroft Images

As states tumbled to Trump, they then took a stick to the papier-mache Trump piñata, thwacking it to the floor. “It’s a poor substitute for what I would like to have seen happen at the polls,” said Beyts.

Her close friend Sue Edwards, a rambler who has repeatedly challenged the closure of rights of way across Trump’s course, went to bed before the result was confirmed. She felt “just grim at the thought of him becoming such a huge power in the world. I can’t bear it.”

“It’s pretty clear where it’s going,” agreed a deflated Beyts. “No amount of willing is going to reverse it.” She too went to sleep, before the final results came in.

People feel they know the Republican presidential candidate very well indeed in this corner of north-east Scotland, 3,300 miles from the Republican candidate’s penthouse suite in Trump Tower in New York.

For the last decade they have felt under siege as Trump bulldozed through a pristine coastal nature reserve at Balmedie, 10 miles north of Aberdeen, for his still-incomplete golf resort. They believe the Republican candidate is utterly unsuited to the presidency.

So, too, does much of Scotland: Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, rescinded Trump’s status as a global trade ambassador last year after his “obnoxious and offensive” outbursts about Mexicans and Muslims. MPs at Westminster had to debate a petition in January demanding Trump was banned from visiting the UK; it was initiated by a campaigner in Aberdeen, Suzanne Kelly, and gained nearly 590,000 signatures in a few weeks.

Local residents who refused to sell their homes to the tycoon say they have had water supplies severed; electricity lines cut; earth walls erected and trees planted around their homes. Trump has verbally abused others, blocking off their traditional and lawful rights of way across his estate.



Until his presidential run, these critics and opponents were the most vocal and defiant of any anti-Trump group in any part of the globe.

Michael Forbes – the quarryman whose home Trump infamously branded a “pigsty” and who featured in the documentary You’ve Been Trumped Too after his home and that of his mother lost their water supply for five years – said he planned to get some sleep.

“I have heard and seen enough of Trump for the last 10 years. Another few hours won’t make any difference,” Forbes said. “I can’t believe that the American people would be so stupid as to vote for a clown. Nobody speaks or thinks like he does unless you’re a clown.”

As US voters queued at polling stations on Tuesday, his neighbours around the Trump International Golf Course Scotland mulled over what a Trump victory or defeat would mean for their lives, with substantial trepidation.

A cake inspired by Trump’s pledge to build a wall between Mexico and the US. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

David Milne, whose home, a former coastguard station, was once boxed in by huge earth walls thrown up during the course’s construction, was downcast when he woke to the news of Trump’s win on Wednesday morning. “It’s quite scary at this point,” he said. “I think things are going to get considerably worse. I think they’re going to start throwing their weight around even more.”

Beyts, a former social worker involved in the campaign group Tripping up Trump, says the prospect of the resort’s owner becoming President Trump left her “absolutely terrified”.

In the latest twist in Trump’s long-running feud with his critics in Aberdeenshire, Beyts was charged in April with public nuisance after being secretly photographed by Trump’s staff as she allegedly relieved herself in the dunes next to his course while she and fellow campaigner Sue Edwards were exercising their legal right of way across his estate.

Those charges have since been dropped. Beyts is now suing Trump for breach of privacy, after it emerged the golf resort had broken UK law by failing to register under the Data Protection Act.

She had invited friends to her home, south of Aberdeen, for companionship. “I just can’t go to bed, because of the thought of sleeping through something which would affect the whole world in a way no other US election has; I just don’t want to be on my own.”