April 11, 2023 - 11:57am
What has gone wrong with politics in Scotland? It’s only two months since a wildly irresponsible piece of legislation, allowing men to change their legal sex without safeguards, helped to bring down the country’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. You might think that Humza Yousaf, who has taken over as leader in the midst of a significant crisis within the SNP, would think twice about pressing ahead with reforms that have attracted such widespread ridicule.
Think again. At the weekend, the new First Minister signalled that he intends to go to court to challenge the UK Government’s veto of the Gender Recognition Reform bill. It’s a bizarre decision, reviving a controversy that’s lost the SNP thousands of members, but maybe the party is desperate for any headlines that might distract attention from the police investigation into its finances.
Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, who was the SNP’s chief executive for many years, was arrested and questioned for twelve hours last week. He was released without charge but new and lurid details of the investigation are emerging every day. The couple deny any wrongdoing, but any hope that Sturgeon’s resignation would draw a line under the party’s troubles has been dashed.
Challenging the UK Government’s Section 35 order in court provides an opportunity to grandstand about ‘interference’ in Scottish affairs. Ian Blackford, who was ousted as leader of the SNP at Westminster in December, did just that at the weekend, describing the Scottish Secretary’s veto of the bill as a “democratic outrage”. Many might think that the phrase is more applicable to resuscitating a piece of legislation that so patently lacks popular support, and which was passed at Holyrood in the face of credible warnings that it would be used by sexual predators.
But the bigger question is why women’s concerns have become so easily disregarded in Scotland. Last week, it emerged that new sentencing guidelines mean that convicted rapists under the age of 25 may be able to avoid a custodial sentence because — apparently — their brains are not fully developed. Sentencing Sean Hogg, who raped a 13-year-old girl when he was 17, a judge said he would have imposed a four- or five-year prison sentence if Hogg had been over the age of 25. Instead, he has to do 270 hours of community service, prompting the author JK Rowling to suggest that young Scottish men are being told ‘first time’s free’.
Not even a week later, the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, called on Sir Keir Starmer to pass a law allowing 16-year-olds to change their legal sex should his party win the next general election. In Scotland, politicians evidently believe that schoolchildren are mature enough to make life-changing decisions about transitioning. But the criminal justice system takes a very different view when it comes to understanding the consequences of attacking girls and women.
When the double rapist Adam Graham appeared in court in Glasgow in January, wearing a blonde wig and calling himself ‘Isla Bryson’, it felt like a mortal blow had been delivered against trans ideology. For the first time, many people in Scotland realised just how fragile women’s rights have become as politicians listen to lobby groups who insist that ‘gender identity’ trumps biology. Now Yousaf is trying to resurrect Sturgeon’s zombie gender reforms. Whether he’s a true believer in this deeply flawed legislation, rather than just cynically looking for an opportunity to blow raspberries at Westminster and distract from his own party’s failings, is immaterial. Either way, the SNP is not standing up for women.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.
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SubscribeKellogg is an idiot suggesting this. It won’t fly with anyone … he must know this.
This is Putin’s 3rd war. (Chechny, Georgia, & now Ukraine. If he doesn’t have a casus belli, he invents one. Putin is the aggressor. Ironically he has driven NATO closer to Russia, with Sweden & Finland eschewing neutrality.
Putin is the aggressor, everything else is noise.
And, in that time, how many wars has America fought?
If we date the Chechnya one to say 1999/2000, then on the US side in that time we’ve got Iraq Ver.2, Afghanistan (you could possibly argue that’s the same one), there’s the war with ISIS in Syria (and general involvement with the Free Syrian Army). I’m leaving out Libya since it’s not really a war they’re fighting, more of a destabilise-and-abandon, and also the Orange Revolution et. al.
Going a bit further back, to the 1990’s we have the US actually bombing a European capital (Belgrade)
Which isn’t to say Putin is or isn’t the aggressor in a given situation, or in many of the wars you cite, but he’s not someone who’s uniquely rogue or aggressive on the world stage. He uses his military aggressively in defence of what he perceives to be Russia’s interests. Rather as the US does, in its interests.
Chechnia was a civil war.
The EU appointed a commission to investigate the 2008 war in Georgia and concluded that Georgia started the war. The Russians gave Georgia a bloody nose, then voluntarily retreated back to the positions they held before Georgia attacked.
You’ll find that western intelligence were all over all three conflicts. Like the Libyan/Egyptian/Syrian ‘uprisings’.
We started all three if you dare to look at the histories of each. We wanted it, we got it (you never know it might have just destabilised Russia and ousted Putin) we mismanaged it and finally we’ve lost.
This is the last western military adventure, proxy or non proxy for a long time. Well, except for Iran it’s beginning to look like.
Would it not be simpler to offer both Ukraine and Russia membership of the EU and get them both bogged down in the politics of the EU. Russia would feel entirely at home with increasing levels of red tape and restrictions on free speech. The EU might have to soft-pedal fines for anti-gay policies in Russia but sacrifices for the grater good have to be made and Russia could easily absorb the EU’s surplus immigrants into the vastness of Russia. With Russia’s oil and mineral resources and indifference to net zero Europe would surely be on a par with the US and China.
The partitions of Cyprus, Korea and Germany may not have been lasting solutions to their problems but all brought peace.
The partitioning of Ireland led to civil wars and decades of murderous “troubles”. The partitioning of British India led to massive ethnic cleansing and bloodshed, and repeated wars. The partitioning of Vietnam led to two decades of bloody war. The partitioning of Palestine has led to ethnic cleansing, unremitting bloodshed and a brutal occupation.
I don’t think partitions as a means to achieve peace have been that successful.
Unfortunate that Mr. Kellogg doesn’t entice Russia by offering it a better “zone of responsibility”. Why not give it, for example, the Atlantic coast of Florida? Balmier climate than Ukraine’s southeast coast, and it might assuage the Russian paranoia about being “surrounded” by the evll West.
Gotta better idea?
Because unless that country is divided up with some international supervision, the Europeans will continue to bankroll their military-industrial partners surrounding it. And once the Russians look again to be steamrolling through the front towards Kiev, then the US will start pouring significant dollars into the war machine once again.
How about letting people vote where they want to be?
I realise the West no longer believes in listening to voters, but it used to be an idea that worked quite well.
US Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg, though not a central figure in American efforts to end the war with Russia, has nonetheless made a new proposal with the intention of jumpstarting stalled peace negotiations: partitioning Ukraine “almost like Berlin after World War Two”.
I’m assuming he misspoke and that what he really meant was “almost like Czechoslovakia before World War Two.
Kudos for saying what few in the Western media will admit: That there are, in the Russian parlance, “root causes” to the war which must be addressed to achieve a peace.
The article linked confines itself to a limited menu of what the Russians have repeatedly stated as the casus belli, but at least acknowledges that Russia had a perfectly rational reason to invade when it did.
Any effort that refuses to engage with the war’s underlying drivers is, as the author states, doomed to failure. The West has talked out of both sides of its mouth for too long for any promises to be effective. That is what ultimately led to the war, and the West will have to accept that this time, only performance will count.