The BBC has a typically bland analysis – Why did Nicola Sturgeon resign as first minister? – suggesting all sorts of reasons why she's off out the door, but of course it was the gender business that did it – her embarrassing refusal to say whether rapist "Isla Bryson" was man or a woman, because she'd be damned either way. If he was a woman just because he said he was, then the absurdity of the gender reform would be plain for all to see, and if he was a man, then the warnings from feminist campaigners that the gender law would be taken advantage of by male sexual predators – which she said would never happen – had happened.
Arguably, the public expects a degree of disingenuousness from all politicians. But in her rigid adherence to gender ideology, Sturgeon displayed an abject indifference to the public mood and to basic decency. As campaign group For Women Scotland has observed, she ended up ‘prioritising dangerous rapists over exceptionally vulnerable women’. Her position became untenable.
Yet even as Scotland reels from the shock of the first politician to become a casualty of gender self-identification, the Welsh devolved government is sprinting toward exactly the same precipice. Last week, following the unveiling of the barmy ‘LGBTQ+ Action Plan for Wales’, Conservative MS Laura Anne Jones told the Senedd that there were ‘clear risks’ from gender self-identification. For this, she was shot down by Hannah Blythyn, deputy minister for social partnership, who told her: ‘Your words have a dangerous impact, Laura Anne Jones. It harms people, the words that you say, the discrimination that comes out of your mouth.’ The same dismissal of people’s concerns that brought down Nicola Sturgeon is on full display in Mark Drakeford’s Wales.
Over in Westminster, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has gained the support of feminists who might never have considered voting Tory before, thanks to his willingness to say the bare minimum. His opportunistic acknowledgement that women are ‘adult human females’ is all that it has taken.
As for the UK Labour Party, Keir Starmer is still squeamish on the ‘woman question’. Undoubtedly some progress has been made since 2021, when frontbencher David Lammy famously accused concerned feminists of being ‘dinosaurs’ who were ‘hoarding rights’. Lammy even claimed that gender self-identification had ‘never, ever come up on the doorstep’. Tell that to the SNP.
Starmer has clearly been chastened by the Scottish experience, leading him to say 16 is ‘too young’ to change gender last month. But his vacillation over the years has not only cost his party the support of many feminists – it has also marked him out as a traitor in the eyes of trans-rights activists. Indeed, last night, at a vigil in London to remember a murdered transgender teenager, the apparently mourning crowd of trans activists chanted ‘fuck Keir Starmer’.
This is because transgenderism is an ‘all or nothing’ ideology. Just as you can’t be ‘a little bit pregnant’, you can’t only support the right of some men to call themselves women. Either male monsters like Adam Graham are women because they say they are, or you end up having to concede that people’s claims about their gender identity don’t actually change reality.
Ultimately, the downfall of Sturgeon should be seen as a cautionary tale for politicians everywhere. There has seldom been a more eloquent demonstration of the adage ‘go woke, go broke’. The British people are waking up to what is happening in the name of ‘trans rights’, and they are rightly angry. But it seems that many of their political representatives on the left are still sleeping on the job.
Not just here in the UK. Spain is heading down the same delusory path:
Spain’s parliament has approved a law to allow anyone aged 16 or over to change their gender without parental consent. It follows months of deep divisions in the government and the country’s feminist movement.
The bill, known as the Trans Law, was opposed by senior government figures, including a deputy prime minister who argued it eroded women’s rights.
Trans women have been allowed to choose to be sent to women’s prisons since 2006, but feminists have raised concerns the law will “institutionalise” the right and make it more open to abuse. It has also prompted criticism from the conservative opposition whose leader said it “trivialises human nature” and has been imposed “by a minority against the majority”.
The law was approved with 191 votes in favour, 60 against and 91 abstentions.
Clearly Spanish sex predators are much nicer that Scottish ones, and will never take advantage…
Mick Hartley 
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