Every time I re-read the SNP’s Hate Crime Bill, I become more convinced that its author, Humza Yousaf, is trying his hand at a Titania McGrath style satire of wokeness. Scotland’s justice secretary is woke but his draft legislation is such a smash-’n’-grab of every item on the wishlist of coercive progressivism that he can’t be entirely serious.
It’s not everyone who can forge common cause between the Catholic Church and the National Secular Society, the Law Society and the Scottish Police Federation, so Yousaf is gifted in that regard. Now the Faculty of Advocates, Scotland’s answer to the Inns of Court, has issued a 35-page examination of the Bill, warning among other things of serious ‘potential unintended consequences’.
The Faculty considers the wording of the new offence of ‘stirring up hatred’ based on ‘religion or, in the case of a social or cultural group, perceived religious affiliation’ to be ‘vague and likely to create difficulty, not least in relation to questions of football and sectarianism’.
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