Nicola Sturgeon has been schooled in the realities of devolution

“O Power of Scotland…” The Great Devolution Settlement is in danger. President for Life Nicola Sturgeon is being disrespected and her latest decree torn up by the Sassenach oppressor. What gives Rishi Sunak the idea that he can prevent Royal Assent to a Bill that represents the sovereign wishes of Her Krankiness? Oh, the Scotland Act gives him the right? Well, that just proves that inadequate statute has had its day and we need a new constitutional settlement. Time for IndyRef2.

Bet you didn’t see that last bit coming. Opinion is divided over whether Sturgeon cynically devised the Scottish Gender Recognition Bill as a provocation to Westminster, in order to create a constitutional row, to infuse fresh life into her stagnant confrontation with the UK government over independence. Without acquitting her of that intention, there is no doubt that Sturgeon is genuinely wedded to the lunatic ideology of which the Bill is an exemplar.

The most persuasive analysis is that Sturgeon saw herself as being in a win/win situation. If the legislation received Royal Assent, then Scotland would have asserted its leading position in the world of woke lunacy; if it were blocked, she would have succeeded in opening a new front in her relentless constitutional war with Westminster. She needs this to appease and energise her party membership and core vote, frustrated by the ever-diminishing prospects of a second referendum on independence.

Krankie’s attitude to government is that anything, however bizarre or unpopular, is preferable as a political agenda to such boring and embarrassing topics as health, education or other public services, which, on Sturgeon’s watch, have shrivelled to Third World status. So, she produced legislation so extravagantly irresponsible as to provoke the first ever rebellion within the SNP’s normally robotic ranks at Holyrood, with nine MSPs, including a resigned minister, rebelling.

Allowing 16-year-olds, without any medical certification of gender dysphoria and without parental consent, to become legally members of the opposite sex simply by signing a document, after only three months’ consideration, is a recipe for disaster. It undermines parental authority, puts youngsters at risk of chemical or surgical interventions that may wreck their lives and makes a travesty of scientific realities.

But the most controversial aspect of the legislation is the danger it poses to women and girls. Any predatory male who obtains a scrap of paper asserting something that is clearly untrue – that he is a woman – would have unrestricted access to women’s prisons, domestic violence shelters, lavatories, changing rooms and every other secure space that has traditionally been exclusive to women, in the interests of their security. Nicola Sturgeon has betrayed 51 per cent of the population of Scotland. And in the interests of what constituency? In recent years the number of people supposedly changing gender in Scotland has averaged 30 per annum.

For that minute minority, the security, dignity and constitutional stability of 5.51 million people has been compromised. For less than a bus-load of confused people, Holyrood, which should have been addressing the problems of the 37,947 patients in Scotland who have been on NHS waiting lists for more than a year, went to the expense and time consumption of drafting a statute to legalise a profoundly irresponsible proposal.

Sometimes it seems as if the Greens are kept around to make the SNP look sane. Maggie Chapman, MSP, a Green supporter of the Bill, when asked on LBC whether she believed an eight-year-old should be empowered to change legal gender, replied: “I think, in principle, we should be exploring that.”

Many of us think, in principle, that our politicians need their heads examined. Now the UK government is posing as the champion of common sense and responsibility on sex-change issues. Yet, at the same time, this “Tory” government is introducing legislation to ban so-called “conversion therapy”. Since when was it the right of the state to ban therapies that may be desired by patients?

The root delusion is that the state, by issuing a certificate, can change a man into a woman, despite the irremovable presence of the Y chromosome and more than 6,500 genes in every human body differentiating men from women, as shown by the most recent research. Governments should never have got into the business of dishing out unscientific documents. What will happen when people start identifying as dogs (as some already do), or zebras or giraffes? Will HMG happily hand out corresponding identity papers? Will it be a “hate crime” to exclude them from competing at Crufts?

Meanwhile, the most barking of the contenders is loudly bewailing her victimhood to the world. Sturgeon has denounced the block on her law: “They’re [the ‘Torees’] using a provision never used in a quarter of a century to effectively block, veto a decision of the Scottish parliament within an area of its competence on a whim.” The obvious reason is that, over the past quarter of a century, no First Minister has come up with a proposal as daft as yours, Nicola. If there is anybody acting on a whim it is Krankie.

“It is an attack on the institution [the Scottish parliament],” raved Krankie. “And if it is allowed to happen on this, then I think there is a very slippery slope of the UK government deciding to veto decisions of the Scottish parliament anytime they like.” This and a great deal more Krankieguff is being spewed out to persuade the Scottish public that its rights are being violated.

The fantasy that Holyrood is somehow a “sovereign” Scottish parliament was promoted by nationalists from the first moment of its existence. Formally opening the new parliament in 1999, Winifred Ewing, a nationalist MSP, declared: “The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25^th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened.”

That was a total misrepresentation. The Parliament of 1707, though unicameral, was composed of three estates – nobility, shires and burghs – and was not only adjourned, but dissolved in 1707. It was a sovereign parliament: one of the reasons the London government pursued the Union so aggressively was the fear that the Scottish Parliament might pass an Act of Settlement in conflict with the English statute, awarding the succession to James VIII (Stuart). None of those characteristics are present in the devolved institution at Holyrood, which should more correctly be termed an “assembly”, like its Welsh and Northern Irish counterparts.

The Scottish parliament owes its existence to Section 1 of the Scotland Act 1998; so, it can hardly complain when Section 35 of the same Act is invoked to prevent a collision between legislation passed by that devolved assembly and legislation emanating from the sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Nicola Sturgeon may be a complete disaster at running Scottish health or education, but she is skilled at tapping into the Scottish grievance culture, so that her bleating may temporarily gain some traction there. But she has chosen the least favourable ground to fight on. Opinion polls taken last month showed large-scale hostility to Sturgeon’s legislation.

Panelbase showed voters opposed to the new law, on grounds of risks to women, by 51 per cent to 24 per cent; a YouGov poll showed 66 per cent opposed to lowering the age limit, with only 21 per cent in favour. A tipping point for some of the public was the voting down of an amendment that would have prevented sex offenders from obtaining a gender recognition certificate, giving them access to female spaces. The high-profile opposition of J K Rowling has also had a discernible effect.

The grievance card might change the public mood, but, all in all, Krankie has shown a distinct lack of political nous in getting herself into a fight she cannot win.

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