JK Rowling slams Swinney over gender stance

Another day, another drama. This time Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney is in the spotlight, after he conducted a rather odd radio interview with BBC Five Live on the trans debate.

With three days to go until the general election and some polls predicting Swinney’s nationalists could lose more than half of their Westminster seats, the FM is under pressure to persuade more voters to back the SNP on the big day. The Nats are no strangers to being out of touch with the general public and one issue that exemplifies this rather well is the party’s stance on self-identification. Swinney’s former boss Nicola Sturgeon was determined to pass the Gender Recognition (Scotland) Bill – which, among other things, proposed to lower the age at which one can legally change their gender from 18 to 16 years old. Two-thirds of the Scottish public were opposed to the reforms and yet MSPs from across Holyrood supported the plans regardless.