Scottish nationalists are shell-shocked after their leader did a bunk on Wednesday. And with good reason. Nicola Sturgeon left the SNP leaderless, directionless, failing on almost every policy front – from the NHS to bottle recycling – and with a legislative time bomb in the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which is due to go off just as their new leader is installed at the end of March. It will probably destroy the Scottish coalition well before then. Indeed, the 18-month-old union with the Scottish Greens, another of Sturgeon’s personal initiatives, is unlikely to last the week.
Attempts by pro-GRR Bill loyalists to keep the finance secretary, Kate Forbes, out of the leadership race by demonising her as a bigot on social media, have failed. When nominations close on Friday she is likely to be the clear front runner in an admittedly lacklustre field.
The two Green ministers, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, have made clear to the Guardian that they will ‘walk’ if the GRR Bill, passed by Holyrood before Christmas, is dropped or significantly altered. Under Forbes it assuredly will be. Her ally, business secretary Ivan McKee, has made clear that she won’t persevere with the Bill in its present form. She is not expected to honour Sturgeon’s promise to oppose Westminster’s decision to block the Bill under Section 35 of the Scotland Act.
Many ordinary SNP members will be only too happy to wave the Greens and the GRR Bill goodbye. The legislation – which would allow 16-year-olds to change legal sex without medical intervention – is profoundly unpopular in Scotland. SNP members were horrified when the Green MSP Maggie Chapman suggested last month that eight-year-olds should be allowed to change sex by self-ID.
They are appalled, too, by circular economy minister Slater’s mishandling of the deposit return scheme for bottles and cans. In general, they wonder why the SNP is in coalition with a party that is anti-growth and wants to shut down the North Sea oil and gas industry in the middle of an energy crisis. And Harvie, the Green leader, is effectively trying to dictate the leadership of the SNP.
Supporters of the Union are suddenly looking a lot more relaxed this weekend
Above all they blame the Greens for the deeply unpopular gender legislation, the SNP’s support for which they made a pre-condition of joining the coalition in 2021. It was their ‘red line’.
Yet the gender Bill has brought down the most successful SNP leader, divided the party, alienated women and perhaps worst of all, from a nationalist point of view, vindicated the UK government. Rishi Sunak blocked the Bill on the grounds that it would damage women’s protections under the UK Equality Act. This it manifestly does.
Just ask the women in Cornton Vale prison who have had to contend with male sex offenders like the 6’ 5” paedophile Katie Dolatowski, who was placed in the female estate. Half of trans prisoners in Scottish jails transitioned by self-ID after they were charged – many for violent sex offences.
There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that the UK Supreme Court would side with the Scottish government if it tries to contest S35 by the deadline in mid-April. The GRR Bill is dead. And so, therefore, is the SNP-Green coalition.
The Greens loathe Forbes because she is a practising Christian and therefore, by their standards, ‘a transphobe, homophobe and probably a racist’ – to paraphrase Sturgeon’s infamous remark about people who oppose Self-ID. Yet Cambridge-educated Forbes is the most talented of the leadership hopefuls. A fluent Gaelic speaker and chartered accountant, she has promised to make economic growth the top priority of the Scottish government.
Forbes’s main rival, the former SNP Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, has not set the heather on fire. One of the other known contenders, health secretary Humza Yousaf, has had the misfortune of presiding over the near collapse of the NHS in Scotland. So, assuming Forbes stands, she is very likely to win.
This will have profound consequences for the SNP and for the Union. The Green ministers will return to the back benches and the SNP will lose its claim that is has a ‘cast iron mandate for an independence referendum’. This was the reason Sturgeon gave for inviting the Greens into her government in the first place. She said that she could then claim an outright majority in favour of independence. The UK government will in future quote Sturgeon’s words back at her and say that independence no longer has a ‘cast iron mandate’ – even if a majority of Holyrood MSPs vote for it.
But the chances of this happening now are remote. Both the SNP and the Greens have been damaged by the chaotic collapse of Sturgeon’s administration. Scottish Labour is making progress in the polls. Many Scottish voters are saying that if the SNP can’t be trusted to tell the difference between a woman and a male rapist, what can they be trusted on? Supporters of the Union are suddenly looking a lot more relaxed this weekend.
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