Ash Regan is the latest MSP to launch a bid for the SNP leadership. The former Holyrood minister, who quit Nicola Sturgeon’s government over gender recognition reforms, addressed party members and journalists at the Hilton in North Queensferry this morning. Her pitch was red meat to the rank and file, abandoning referendums as the mechanism to achieve independence. Instead, she argued, 50 per cent plus one vote for the SNP and other nationalist parties in any Scottish or UK election would be grounds to enter negotiations with Westminster for Scotland’s secession. She noted that this was once a widely-held view inside the SNP and even among some of its Unionist opponents.
Under questioning, Regan struggled to explain how she would initiate negotiations if the UK Government refused to enter them. At one point, she said the matter had ‘nothing to do with the UK Government’ and at another that Whitehall would have to respect the SNP’s supposed mandate. She also asserted that the international community would recognise Scotland as independent and that the UK Government would too, eventually. She gave no evidence for this view and did not outline what political, legal or diplomatic route she would take in the event that Westminster refused to surrender Scotland.
Regan has also clinched the support of Joanna Cherry
Regan echoed rival candidate Kate Forbes in saying she would not go to court to challenge Westminster’s block on the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The legislation would allow anyone 16 or over to change their legal sex by self-assertion rather than doctor’s diagnosis. It was barred by Alister Jack, the Secretary of State for Scotland, under Section 35 of the Scotland Act, which allows Westminster to stall a Holyrood law that could force legal changes on the UK as a whole. Regan, however, left a door open to appointing a citizens’ assembly on the matter if polls showed a majority wanted it.
Regan also undertook to work with all factions and parties on the nationalist side of politics. This will be seen as an olive branch to Alex Salmond, who left the SNP to form his own Alba party after his acquittal on sex charges and multiple inquiries into the Scottish Government’s conduct over the matter. Regan has also clinched the support of Joanna Cherry, the SNP MP and KC, who introduced her this morning. Cherry was an early critic of both the GRR Bill and Sturgeon’s approach to securing an independence referendum, which ended in defeat before the Supreme Court last year. Bagging Cherry’s backing is a boost to a campaign that has not been taken terribly seriously so far.
As well as playing to the members’ hearts on independence, Regan used her speech to stress her left-of-centre credentials, though added that a Scotland she led would believe in enterprise as well as social justice. She trails in all polling and bookmaker odds, but Ash Regan will be hoping that talking tough about Westminster and promising to move the party past divisions over gender is enough to shift opinion in her favour.
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