Why Nicola Sturgeon had to go

Nothing in life or politics lasts forever, not even Nicola Sturgeon’s legendary popularity. In a recent poll, 42 per cent of Scots said the First Minister should step down immediately. It seems she has taken the hint: this morning Sturgeon announced that she would be resigning after eight years as head of the Scottish government.

‘The nature and form of modern political discourse means there is a much greater intensity – dare I say it brutality – to life as a politician than in years gone by,’ she said in a press conference at Bute House in Edinburgh.

As Sturgeon prepares to hand over to her successor, there is no doubt that the SNP still dominates Scottish politics. But every dog in the street, as they say here, knew that Sturgeon’s time was coming to an end.

Sturgeon’s policy of gender self-declaration is, of course, the proximate cause of the First Minister’s misfortune. The incarceration of a double rapist, Isla Bryson, in a women’s prison, has turned into a moral and political Chernobyl. The more Sturgeon tries to tamp it down, the worse the fallout. Every press conference was being dominated by the question: is Bryson a man or a woman?

Sturgeon still refuses to say – even though she ordered the Scottish Prison Service to send ‘the individual’, as she describes him, to a male jail. The reason is that affirming his biological sex might undermine her Gender Recognition Reform Bill. This legislation would give Adam Graham – to use Bryson’s ‘dead name’ – a legally-enforceable gender recognition certificate on demand, making him legally a woman.

The Bill has been blocked by the UK government on the grounds that this would potentially damage women’s rights under the UK Equality Act. Scots appear to agree: they oppose the GRR Bill by two to one.