The Isla Bryson fiasco has been a disaster for Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP:
Support for the SNP, for Nicola Sturgeon and for Scottish independence has fallen sharply as the party’s crisis over transgender rights deepens.
Backing for the party for the devolved Holyrood elections has slumped to its lowest for five years in the latest YouGov poll, and voting intentions for Westminster were the worst since 2019.
Senior allies of the first minister have spoken of a “meltdown” in the party since a sex offender was sent to Scotland’s only all-female prison after two convictions for rape, having changed gender identity while awaiting trial.
After a public outcry and a warning from a UN special rapporteur, Sturgeon announced a U-turn, appearing to contradict her own self-declaration policy for transgender people by questioning the validity of Isla Bryson’s status. Last week she declared that the rapist, previously known as Adam Graham, was “almost certainly” masquerading as trans and would not stay in the women’s estate.
Critics including the author JK Rowling have suggested that Bryson’s case and others like it confirm the risks that Sturgeon’s approach to trans rights pose for women-only spaces, including prisons, changing rooms and hospital wards. Sturgeon remains committed to allowing people as young as 16 to quickly change their legal gender, although her bill has been vetoed by the UK government on the ground that it would undermine UK-wide equality law.
Writing in The Sunday Times, the former SNP deputy leader Jill Sillars says: “It may infuriate Nicola Sturgeon, but it seems that JK Rowling’s political judgment is superior: the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill will be Sturgeon’s poll tax.
“Sturgeon is not in control of this. She allied herself with zealots, ignored public anxieties, denied biology, produced a bill that most can see is deeply flawed, rejected sensible amendments such as barring sex offenders from self-identification, and cannot hide from the people that predatory males, if the bill becomes law, can manipulate it to invade women’s safe spaces. The recent rapist case will not be the only one that will haunt her.
Alex Bell, a former SNP policy chief, accused Sturgeon of betraying Scotland, saying that the affair has been “a disaster for the first minister and the SNP. It has damaged the nation and made Holyrood look stupid.”
Yep.
If Sturgeon doesn’t have enough information to have clarity on whether a double rapist is a man, then “perhaps we need more clarity on whether the first minister knows her arse from her elbow”.
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