The Turnberry Turnover
AUGUST 1, 2025
The President of the European Commission’s trade deal with Trump is a humiliating capitulation by the EU, argues Leslie Huckfield.
Ursula von der Leyen is head of the European Union’s civil service. Despite her high profile media presence, that’s all, with her position not very secure. Since the 1990s, much of the European Union has kept going by a cosy consensus of mainland European Christian and Social Democrats, with many displaying only minor differences. So while von der Leyen’s second European Parliament confirmation vote of 401 to 284 on July 18th 2024 looked more comfortable than her first election in 2019, this was only possible through a secret vote concealing last minute support from right wing greens and the centre right.
But, despite this narrow margin, she poses as though still cocooned and protected by a historical centrist coalition, despite its increasing fragility. In a more recent European Parliament vote on July 10th 2025, though 360 out of 720 MEPs voted not to censure her for withholding vaccine texts with her husband at Pfizer during COVID, 175 voted for the censure motion and 167 didn’t vote at all. She herself didn’t even bother to attend.
All this means that, despite mainstream media portrayals, her own position and that of the wider European Union are increasingly precarious.
The EU is now in a similar position to the 1777 original constitution of the United States, with its Articles of Confederation based on 13 states. It took ten years for these to realise that their powers were limited, especially in defence and taxation. It took until 1789 for a new Constitution under George Washington to emerge, providing a more central government by majority rule. Washington had served two terms and stood down – offering a timely lesson for von der Leyen.
The European Union is still at this first stage, with its complex, multi-stakeholder model striving to take decisions beyond traditional state hierarchies. Some Council of Ministers’ voting still requires unanimity, with other Treaty provisions offering only a slender theoretical or practical basis for the operation of EU institutions, especially when the Council of Ministers and Commission seek to intervene within Member States. Much media commentary has already declared her agreement with Donald Trump on Sunday as her “Turnberry Turnover” – “pie in the sky” and ‘impossible to implement.’
The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union 2007 and the Treaty of Lisbon 2009 were only cobbled together following referenda in France, Ireland and the Netherlands. Gordon Brown signed at the last minute by pretending it wasn’t really a Treaty. He was accused by William Hague MP, a former Tory Leader of the Opposition, of being unwilling to be photographed while signing.
Before this, though a draft Treaty for Establishing a European Constitution had been adopted by the European Council of Ministers on 18th June 2004 and approved by the European Parliament, this was then rejected by France (29th May 2005) and the Netherlands (1st June 2005) in their national referenda.
It was not until two further referenda in Ireland in 2008 and 2009 that the Lisbon Treaty finally emerged as a Guidance Manual on how the EU might work rather than as a supranational European Constitution. Not only is there no overarching European Constitution, but throughout Europe there is no single view of the European Union, with each Member State having different aspirations.
Restricted by the limitations of the 2007 and 2009 Treaties, the EU has invented ‘work around’ bodies, including the European External Action Service, the European Defence Agency, European Union Institute for Security Studies and European Political Community. Effectively these external agencies enable EU policy to progress without democratic oversight or control. When policy emerges into any kind of ‘democratic daylight’, a ‘grand coalition’ of EU Christian and Social Democrats, encouraged by EU Commission Presidents like von der Leyen, has usually enabled its more formal adoption as EU policy. At the pinnacle of all of this sits Antonio Costa, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, as President of the Council of Ministers. Though Costa was present at Turnberry on Sunday, he was probably wise to let the head of his civil service take the limelight, and increasingly, the blame.
Despite its shaky constitutional fabric, the EU’s centrist coalition is fading fast. The main result of the last complete European Parliament Elections in June 2024 was that the combined European People’s Party and S&D (the Christian and Social Democrats) membership of 324 no longer formed a majority out of 720 members. Von der Leyen still sounds as though the European Union was fashioned like the original US Articles of Confederation. This limits her breadth of understanding, especially in external matters. When she visited Beijing for trade talks on Thursday 24th July, the Chinese didn’t even bother to meet her at the airport, instead sending an ordinary Beijing shuttle bus to the airport. Her much vaunted EU-China ‘trade talks’ barely lasted a day and there wasn’t even a joint press conference.
Her meeting with Donald Trump at Turnberry was even more humiliating. She had not followed the advice of some Member States and from the Director General for Trade, Sabine Weyand (who was Michel Barnier’s lieutenant throughout the Brexit negotiations and appeared as the only one not smiling for the media, giving a ‘thumbs up’ throughout von der Leyen’s outright capitulation.
The Trump Administration operates ‘government by deal-making’, with a guaranteed ringside seat for politically favourable and prominent social media influencers. This handpicked audience has helped to sell Trump’s Turnberry ‘deal’ as von der Leyen’s having negotiated 15% tariffs on EU exports to the US rather than 30%, while committing to charge zero tariffs on US imports to the US, though there were no US tariffs at all on EU exports before April 2025!
The EU has also agreed to invest $600 billion in the US, will “purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of American military equipment” and is committing to buying $750 billion dollars’ worth of expensive US liquified natural gas – $250 billion for each of the next three years. All this is despite the EU Commission having no competence in defence matters and total EU fossil fuel imports from the US in 2024 of only $75bn, with a strong internal commitment to reduce fossil fuel dependency.
In exchange for these concessions and extraction of EU wealth, the EU gets… nothing. This is the ‘deal’: the EU not only gets nothing but ensures that through higher energy prices that it will no longer be able to compete with the US and China. Not only does this even remotely resemble an agreement between two equal sovereign powers but the EU’s weakness will only encourage further exploitation. Through von der Leyen, Europe’s is already headlong into a decade of humiliation.
Firstly, as shown above, the EU’s institutional framework is in no position to enforce or implement any of this. Instead of agreeing to such a disadvantageous deal, it would have been better for the EU to have formed a coalition with other affected economies, such as Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and South Korea to create an a more effective counterweight to US tariff threats. As it stands, President Trump’s strategy of pitting other economies against each other has worked – for Trump.
Secondly, the Turnberry Deal is just as devastating for Europe’s energy supplies. A major influential Competitiveness Report (commissioned by von der Leyen) by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi in September 2024 highlighted EU energy problems. Having depended on cheaper Russian pipeline gas for 45% if its energy supplies in 2021, the EU has already lost more than a year of GDP growth through having to re-direct massive fiscal resources to energy subsidies and building new infrastructure to import liquefied natural gas at a huge cost. As Draghi says, “While energy prices have fallen considerably from their peaks, EU companies still face electricity prices that are 2-3 times those in the US and natural gas prices paid are 4-5 times higher.”
EU power generation falls within the scope of its Emission Trading Scheme, resulting in costs around €20-25/MWh for gas-fired generation in the EU while in California the same cost stands at around €10-15/MWh. So even before Turnberry, the EU faced much higher energy prices.
But neither did von der Leyen show any understanding of Trump’s vaunted EU-US ‘trade imbalance’ which he sought to remedy at Turnberry. By excluding Ireland and its pharmaceutical trade, over 42% of the EU’s goods surplus with the US disappears. The total drops from €198.2 billion to €114.3 billion. None of this shows traditional European manufacturing strength but shows US pharma companies doing tax structuring, profit and intellectual property shifting, which Trump’s own Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 2018 encouraged. Ireland accounted for €50.1 billion of the EU’s trade surplus with the US in 2024, driven by €72.6 billion in exports, much of it in pharmaceuticals. These exports are not really Irish exports but instead are booked through Ireland by US drug giants like Pfizer, AbbVie, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson. American firms have shifted intellectual property and production into Ireland to benefit from its lower tax and flexible accounting regime.
No wonder that the US Heritage Foundation, Hungary’s Mathias Convinus Collegium and Poland’s Ordo Luris Institute for Legal Culture earlier this year published “The Great Reset: Restoring Member State Sovereignty in the European Union as the basis for future debate about Europe.” Instead of the EU moving from its Articles of Confederation to a George Washington constitution, it should instead revert to being a collection of independent Member States. This MAGA view has already been peddled heavily in Europe by JD Vance as US Vice President. The method, process and attempted implementation of von der Leyen’s Turnberry capitulation provides easy ammunition to Vance and his MAGA advocates.
In the meantime, the real goal of Trump and Vance is to reorganize allies and partners along US-centric supply chains, under a broader geoeconomic and geopolitical cloud, and a controlled technological ecosystem – all under Washington’s security and defence umbrella. At Turnberry on Sunday, von der Leyen played a very valued role in this process.
Leslie Huckfield was MP for Nuneaton from 1967 to 1983, a minister from 1976 to 1979, a Member of the European Parliament from 1984 to 1989 and is now active in the EP Former Members’ Association.
Image: Meeting between Ursula von der Leyen, President of the EC, and Donald Trump, President of the United States. Source: Visit of Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, to Sccotland, Author: Fred Guerdin / European Union, 2025 / EC – Audiovisual Service, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
Best reactions to Trump’s visit to Scotland
Left Foot Forward
"I'll be washing my hair"
Donald Trump has now left Scotland after a four-day visit where he met UK and Scottish heads of government in between rounds of golf.
The visit prompted a wave of political reaction and public satire, as the president opened a new golf course at his Menie Estate in Aberdeenshire. While Trump used the trip to weigh in on UK politics and global issues, many British figures didn’t shy away from mocking or challenging him.
Here’s four of the best reactions.
Stephen Flynn – “I’ll be washing my hair”
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, who is bald, joked that he would do anything to avoid meeting Trump during his UK visit. He said he’d be “busy getting a haircut, or washing my hair” when Trump arrives in Scotland. “I’ll find any excuse possible,” he added.
Sadiq Khan hits back after “nasty man” remark
During a press conference in Scotland, Trump reignited his long-running feud with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, branding him “a nasty person” who has “done a terrible job.” He also said he would “certainly” visit London.
Keir Starmer, who was sitting beside Trump, interjected: “He’s a friend of mine, actually.”
A spokesperson for Khan mockingly responded, saying: “Sadiq is delighted that President Trump wants to come to the greatest city in the world.
“He’d see how our diversity makes us stronger, not weaker; richer, not poorer.
“Perhaps these are the reasons why a record number of Americans have applied for British citizenship under his presidency.”
An ally of Khan also pointed out that the mayor has won all three elections to the position, including in May 2021, months after Trump lost the 2020 US election.
Speaking to the High Performance podcast, Khan said: “It’s personal, let’s be frank. If I wasn’t this colour skin, if I wasn’t a practising Muslim, he wouldn’t have come for me.”
Their feud dates back to Trump’s first term, when Khan publicly condemned his proposed Muslim travel ban. Trump has previously called the London mayor “a stone-cold loser” and “very dumb.”
John Swinney talks whisky and Gaza
First Minister John Swinney held a 15 to 20-minute conversation at the President’s Balmedie Estate. Following the meeting, Swinney tweeted:
“I met with President Trump last night and today. I sought a change to tariffs for Scotland’s whisky industry. I set out the urgent need for a ceasefire in Gaza and for humanitarian aid to flow, as well as the need to support Ukraine. Scotland’s voice was heard loud and clear.”
The National’s front page – “Convicted US felon to arrive in Scotland”
One of the most viral responses came from the National, which led with the front page headline:
“Convicted US felon to arrive in Scotland.”
The front page quickly drew ire from Trump supporters online, but the paper stood by it, posing a question to critics: “Which part is factually inaccurate?”
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