Nicola Sturgeon’s arrogance and ego have turned devolution into a downright disgrace

This demagogue of a second-rate politician is determined to force her will on a reluctant Scotland in spite of the damage it will cause

Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/12/22

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What Nicola Sturgeon has managed to do in the space of the last few days has been to turn a genuine, if misguided, democratic experiment - devolution - into a downright disgrace. In normal circumstances, maybe laughing stock would be a better description - given the farcical scenes acted out at the Scottish Parliament.

But disgrace really is the appropriate term for what Sturgeon has perpetrated this week: here we had a demagogue of a second-rate politician determined to force her will on a reluctant people and all for the sake of boosting her ego and seeking to carve an international reputation for herself as a major social reformer.

Instead, however, by using what she thought was the untrammelled power that her squalid coalition deal with the Scottish Greens gave her, all she’s done has been to damage not just the Scottish Parliament, but the country of Scotland itself, giving it the image of what Lord Hailsham termed an “elective dictatorship” or what others might term a “banana republic”.

Mind you, this was not without a sterling, if not brilliant, guerrilla operation by the Scottish Tories to make the Nats pay for their arrogance. They talked and talked long and loud and were primarily responsible for keeping the MSPs up until the wee small hours of Wednesday morning.

And then again they caused another lengthy delay when a complicated amendment from Borders MSP Rachey Hamilton forced a suspension on Wednesday afternoon.

Their tactics infuriated the Nat footsoldiers but the Tory tactics were entirely justified because of the First Minister’s arrogance in pushing this gender bill that permioung people as young as 16 to be allowed to change their gender by merely declaring that’s what they want to do. 

Having had her top priority - breaking up Britain - brutally rebuffed by a unanimous verdict of the Supreme Court, Sturgeon insisted that her gender-change law must be changed. Immediately.

Using her parliamentary majority enables her to not only get the votes she always gets from a largely supine party, but to also rig the parliamentary timetable. Thus, she declared that this massive change in the way society lives had to be passed in le-quick time, with 150 amendments to be passed in one parliamentary 

That process began on Tuesday but less than half were debated, amid farcical scenes where MSPs were heckled from the public galleries, where the protestors were defended by opposition politicians but threatened with arrest by police and security staff.

And then at midnight, fate took a hand and the building’s automatic time switches plunged the whole thing into darkness - leading everything to be postponed to a hectic second day of debate yesterday.

Mind you, “debate” is maybe a bit of an exaggeration, as the SNP footsoldiers have been denied a free vote on the big issues and so not much is being changed as the bill proceeds. For instance, safeguards designed to make it harder for sex offenders to fraudulently apply to change their gender was voted down to the dismay of feminist critics.

That’s not to say there haven’t been rumblings in Nat ranks over this bill. One minister was amongst nine MSPs who refused to support this bill when it was last debated and another prominent opponent was part of a protest demonstration outside Holyrood last night.

Joanna Cherry is a KC and Westminster MP and has always been a strong opponent of the gender reform plans. She previously claimed she was subjected to an “18-month campaign” of abuse because of her support for women’s rights.

The Edinburgh MP was removed from her post as the party’s justice and home affairs spokeswoman at Westminster in 2021.

However, Sturgeon resisted protests and appeals from opposition parties and from leading opponents, like JK Rowling, and she also rejected a demand from Kemi Badenoch, the UK equalities minister, that she should delay or amend the bill.

Sadly, in spite of their efforts, in spite of genuine concerns within her own party and a spirited fightback by the Tories at Holyrood, Sturgeon refused to back down and reconsider.

But did anyone really think she would?