Scotland

The appalling debacle of the double rapist, Isla Bryson, being locked up in a women’s prison in Scotland, albeit in segregation, gave me pause for thought. As the former governor of Cornton Vale, the prison Bryson was incarcerated in, what would I have done if I was still in the job?  ‘Over my dead body,’ was the response I gave when another trans-identified male inmate sought to be moved to Cornton Vale, back in 2016, when I was in charge. I was outraged: this was an individual who, over his years of offending, had committed multiple acts of serious violence, including to prison and health care staff. From prison, he stalked a 13 year-old girl and intimidated a female member of staff so completely she left her job.

Nicola Sturgeon is going nowhere. Some of her more excitable critics reckon the complete implosion of her policy on transgender prisoners could finish off her premiership. Not least since it comes just as she was planning a fightback against the UK government’s decision to block her Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill. The SNP leader has been subjected to cringe-making TV interviews about whether she thinks rapists are women if they say so and awkward questions at Holyrood about placing male sex offenders in women’s prisons. She has been forced to U-turn repeatedly and has rushed out new regulations on transgender prisoners at odds with the self-identification principle at the heart of her GRR Bill.

Oh dear. It seems that Nicola Sturgeon seems to have got her progressive causes in a muddle. The First Minister is having a tricky time trying to work out if she's a feminist first or an LGBT ally in light of her government's U-turn on trans prisoners. On Sunday, a 'pause' was placed on the transfer to women's jails of trans inmates with a history of violence, after the Scottish Prison initially sent a double rapist to a women's only-prison. But today when asked if she would apologise, the First Minister refused, saying: 'I don't think there is anything for that.' And in an excruciating interview with ITV's Peter Smith this afternoon, Sturgeon sought to avoid addressing the logical conclusion of her government's commitments on transgender rights.

Congratulations must go to Alan Cumming who has today worked out what the acronym 'OBE' stands for – a mere 14 years after receiving the award. It's one thing to refuse an honour on the grounds of political developments (John Lennon), taste (Michael Winner) or historic objections (Benjamin Zephaniah). But it's quite another to do as Cumming has done which is accept the Order of the British Empire, wear proudly and then renounce it more than a decade later. The Scottish actor was given the honour to mark his work as an actor and LGBT activist. But now, apparently, the fight for same-sex rights has changed so much since 2009 that the 'great good the award brought to the LGBTQ+ cause back in 2009 is now less potent than the misgivings I have being associated with the toxicity of empire.

Will no one think of the middle classes? It’s not the most stirring call to arms. When Scottish Labour MSP Michael Marra complained that ‘the doors are closed’ at universities to ‘Scottish pupils from ordinary families and an average school’, Nicola Sturgeon quipped that she ‘used to be regularly criticised for the fact that too few young people from deprived communities were going to university’, but now she was ‘being criticised for the fact that too many of them are going to university’. As ever with Sturgeon, the rhetoric is facile and the reality much more prosaic. That more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are getting into university is no bad thing, but nor is it a symbol of an egalitarian Scotland.

'Flower of Scotland' is the unofficial national anthem north of the border but soon enough we may never hear its like again. Jim Telfer, one of the country’s most celebrated rugby coaches, has called for the song to be dropped at sporting events in favour of an alternative that ‘shows us standing for something rather than against something as a country’. His plea has been echoed by former Scotland international Jim Aitken, who wrote to the Times dismissing the song as an ‘anti-English dirge’.  Telfer’s complaint prompted Lord McConnell, a former Labour first minister, to urge a more ‘positive’ musical number, while Scottish Tory MSP Murdo Fraser deemed the current tune too ‘jingoistic’.

Nicola Sturgeon is angry. The UK government has confirmed it will block her party’s controversial gender Bill, which removes key safeguards from the process by which someone can have their preferred gender rather than their biological sex recognised in law. Opponents, critics and legal commentators warned during the Bill’s passage before Christmas that it could change how the law operates not only in Scotland but in England and Wales, too. Sturgeon decided she knew better, a genre of governance already familiar to people in Scotland. She pushed the Bill through and now the Secretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack has invoked Section 35, a never-before-used provision of the Scotland Act which impedes Royal Assent for a devolved Bill.  Hence why Sturgeon is angry. Very angry.

Welcome to the Terf wars. There's just two days ago until the deadline when Rishi Sunak has to decide whether or not to block Nicola Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The legislation was passed last month by a majority at Holyrood of 86 to 39 votes and made it easier for people as young as 16 to change gender without seeing a doctor. However under Section 35 of the Scotland Act, UK ministers can stop a bill getting royal assent if they think it would alter laws reserved to Westminster – in this case equalities law and, specifically, the Equality Act. Sunak must decide by Wednesday whether to use this mechanism to stop the legislation or accept it, amid fears that it could lead to 'gender tourism' across the border.

Rishi Sunak is keen to distance himself from Liz Truss over Scotland. Shortly before she became prime minister, Truss suggested it was best to ‘ignore’ the ‘attention seeker’ Nicola Sturgeon. But Sunak is adopting a more conciliatory approach towards the SNP leader. The pair enjoyed a working dinner last night in Inverness on Sunak’s first trip to Scotland since becoming Prime Minister. They discussed the NHS, the economy and strikes. While there was a ‘robust’ exchange on independence, the post-match report does not point to a war of words between the pair. Yet cordial relations between them could prove short-lived.

Ministers will come under increased pressure to block Nicola Sturgeon’s gender legislation with the publication of a new Policy Exchange paper today. This examination of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill concludes it will have serious impacts on the rest of the UK. The Bill removes the safeguards involved in obtaining a gender recognition certificate, the means by which a man can have the law treat him as a woman, and vice versa. It was pushed through the Scottish parliament before Christmas with little time for debate At present, the law requires an applicant to be 18 or older, to have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a clinician and to prove they have lived in their preferred ‘gender identity’ for at least two years.

The Scottish parliament returned from its Christmas recess today and held its first debate of 2023. Take a guess what it was about.  Yes, independence. Holyrood occasionally touches on other matters – the NHS, the educational attainment gap – but these are mere throat-clearings in a never-ending dialogue between the SNP government and its hardline followers.  This strategy, though counter-intuitive, has thus far proved pretty useful to Nicola Sturgeon: the more she gins up her supporters with talk of breaking away from the UK, the less they seem to notice that she hasn’t taken them a single inch in that direction in eight years as SNP leader.

A new year beckons but old habits die hard. So it's no surprise then that the SNP have opted to begin 2023 by welcoming one of their disgraced brethren back into the fold. Patrick Grady, the party's former chief whip, has this morning had the SNP whip restored at Westminster – despite being found to have sexually harassed a teenage party employee. Is that what the nats meant when they talked about preserving 'Scotland's future' eh? Grady was reported to have 'resigned' last summer from the nationalists after the Commons authorities ruled he had made an unwanted sexual advance towards a male staff member.

The UK government’s threat to block Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill took many by surprise. The powers, under Section 35 of the Scotland Act, have never been used before. The assumption from some observers, this one included, was that this was a negotiating tactic ahead of inter-governmental discussions on the Bill’s implementation and cross-border issues that might arise. That assumption appears to be wrong. I understand that raising the spectre of Section 35 is not a negotiating tactic: ministers are seriously contemplating it and legal advice is being sought. Among ministers’ concerns are questions over passports, driving licences and public safety.