Donald Trump hates windmills and can’t stop tilting at them. Nobody should have been surprised that he was hardly off the plane before sharing his prejudices. It’s a bit like a guest arriving in someone’s house and promptly criticising the curtains.

We have a well-established anti-windfarm lobby in Scotland which no doubt took succour from Trump’s support. That, however, is a diversion from a more difficult truth. A growing number of people who are not part of any “anti-windfarm” brigade are alarmed by what is evolving in the absence of any coherent strategy.

It is increasingly urgent to separate these two categories of opinion. The Trumpites are unappeasable. The other is reasonable, mainly supportive of energy transition and deserves serious attention before that sound principle is further discredited by what increasingly resembles a Gold Rush mentality that “anything goes”.

A sensible way to develop energy infrastructure would start by determining where power should be generated in order to meet demand. It would then ensure that the means of connection exist to carry that power to its markets, driven mainly by optimum economic efficiency (i.e. cost to consumers).

This strategy might well (as happened decades ago with the Hydro Electric schemes) be tempered by a social element; embracing the principle that no part of the country should be excluded from the right to generate power and obtain benefit from it. In the case of wind power, that would underpin the right of Scotland’s periphery to contribute to the UK’s energy needs and receive commensurate benefit.

If all this was set out clearly, there would be a reasonable prospect of........

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