This week Nicola Sturgeon attempted to retake control of the media narrative following seven days of chaos and uncertainty over her gender recognition policy. The inciting event: the transfer of Isla Bryson, a double rapist claiming to be a transwoman, to a women’s jail, which sparked a fierce public outcry.
Over the next few days, the definitions and the explanations of this policy flip-flopped wildly as the SNP attempted to justify the unjustifiable of placing a dangerous man alongside female prisoners while also stating that he was really a woman. It was the hokey cokey of policies: first she was in, then she was out, and when she was only halfway in she was neither in nor out.
Sturgeon tried one of her classic strategies of saying “Nothing to see here, move on”, yet the electorate and the media did not move on this time. The further prospect of one of Scotland’s most notorious prisoners – now calling themselves Tiffany Scott but previously Andrew Burns – being transferred to a woman’s prison had poured fuel on the fire that was raging following the Bryson indecisiveness. The attempt by Sturgeon to place the blame for this mess on Scottish Prison Service procedures fell flat because everyone knows that the First Minister made her views clear, resulting in the prisoner being shifted shortly afterwards to a male prison.
The fact that this may subsequently result in a legitimate legal claim from Bryson on their human rights has not been openly discussed by Sturgeon and her team because all that matters is that they firefight their way from one blaze to the next.
Thus, we had Scotland’s hapless justice secretary Keith Brown sent out to present the new policy which was – in entirely Orwellian terms – that some trans women will not be allowed to serve their sentence in a women’s jail but that others might. Sturgeon then compounded the error with car crash interviews with ITV and Channel Four where, after an embarrassingly incoherent set of answers, Sturgeon eventually conceded that some trans women would not be treated in the same way as women and so some trans women were not women.
The cat was out of the bag. Her bill was shown to be a shambles, the mess of contradictions that it is, ineptly constructed and illogically drafted, driven entirely by Sturgeon’s desire to make a statement on gender as part of her passport to a new life beyond Scotland. But, and this must have stung, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Alice Edwards intervened: “Scotland: Female prisoners have a right to be protected from violent sex offenders no matter how they identify. Where is the common sense?”
The UN and the EU are Sturgeon’s preferred new employers, so to be criticised like this must have felt like the death knell for her future job prospects.
Yet despite the millions spent on PR annually by her team of nearly 60 communications specialists, Sturgeon chose her preferred route of a blustering, hectoring approach, doubling down on the policy by denouncing those who don’t believe in her bill as “deeply misogynist, often homophobic, possibly some of them racist as well”.
The incomprehension of trying to defend the indefensible and illogical argument presented by Sturgeon has now resulted in a review which is likely to lead to a permanent ban on transwomen ever being sent to a women’s prison in Scotland. Sturgeon herself will have undermined the basis of her bill to ensure that there is indeed a two-tier system for trans women and women in Scotland.
For there is little doubt that this has seriously damaged the SNP among its supporters, never mind the thousands of waverers they need to attract to win independence. And this is where things get interesting.
Recently, there has been no shortage of criticism, dissent, and disagreement within the ranks of the SNP. The latest being a potential legal action, led by SNP councillors in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), against the intervention by Sturgeon into the number of teachers they must employ. The Scottish government is imposing ring fencing of funding to ensure teacher numbers remain at their current level while local councils say they must fall if budgets are to be balanced.
With this case, and many others, the SNP is in siege mode but all this will be doing little for the voting preferences of the average Scot. The die-hard believers will continue to think all of this is a result of Westminster rule and that these issues will disappear when the main aim of independence is achieved. But there aren’t nearly enough of them to win a vote and it is the floating voter that matters and there must be few within the senior team of the SNP who believe that the last week has done anything but severely damage their vote.
But who can deliver the final blow? Sturgeon is married to the SNP chief executive so it won’t be led by any backroom administrative coup. The MSPs in Holyrood are so supine, and many so weak intellectually (that is actually one of the essential characteristics required for the job) that they will sit on their hands unless someone leads the way.
That leaves the rebellious Westminster MPs’. It is clear they are in revolt but their chosen leader to the promised land – Stephen Flynn – has proven to be a bit lack lacklustre in his performance to date, dividing further an already divided party.
That leaves only the electorate. With nearly two years to go before the next ballot, it would appear that Scotland will be stuck with a floundering, irascible, irrational leader incapable of seeing just how badly wrong her decision making has become.
The only other potential route out of this madness would be a series of polls which show a seriously declining popularity in the party. Sturgeon herself has already seen her personal polling fall and given the last week this is likely to continue. But if low polling was to persist for a sustained period indicating losses at the next Westminster election, and the subsequent Scottish elections, then this may push wiser heads (and there are a few) within the SNP that someone needs to speak to Sturgeon to suggest a change of plans. But who would be able to do this?
Stewart MacDonald the Westminster MP is well regarded, as is Kate Forbes, the Finance Secretary currently on maternity leave but it is questionable, given the way the SNP is run, that questioning the leader is easy. The rules state that any minister who does not follow SNP policy must resign – hence the recent removal of Ash Regan – so the personal motivation to comment is potentially fraught with difficulties.
Then there is Nicola Sturgeon herself. Clearly in love with power and vastly overestimating her status and abilities in global affairs, her recent performances indicate she has the self-awareness of Donald Trump. She tends to view dissent as ignorance and drives on regardless of the obvious problems she is causing. She has appointed MSPs who blindly agree with everything she says – the clapping seals as they are called – so she will not expect or hear any argument from them.
But at some point, even with the most vain and isolated individuals, surely they must come to see that all is not well in a country that has so many problems. Health, education, transport, drugs, the economy, housing, poverty, mortality rates, the list goes on and none of it is positive. Most would be hard pressed to name a successful policy of the last decade – baby boxes will be cited and increased Scottish Child payments for the poorest – and generally the feeling is of a country sliding toward isolation, and failure. As Sturgeon has always claimed she is ultimately responsible for every policy this would now be the time to accept that she had failed and fall on her sword. But I wouldn’t hold your breath.
Colin Wright is an Edinburgh-based freelance journalist. His writing has appeared in The Scotsman, the Herald, the Times, the Telegraph, the BBC, the New Statesman.
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