It’s a rare occasion a domestic law born out of Holyrood machinations attracts worldwide news attention, never mind offer up the the potential to make Scotland a laughing stock, but Humza’s law does just that.

I often hear or read the Hate Crime Bill was well intended, but it’s a position I cannot accept for I believe it is utterly misconceived. It is a delusion, and typical of those politicians who wish to control us that a law should be devised to try and control not only what we might say but what we might think.

What we write, draw, sing, speak, chant and gesture are all representations of our thoughts, but so long as those who govern us have no way of evidencing what we might be thinking, it is only by limiting such physically representations of our thoughts they can seek to punish us for having different beliefs from them.

It’s been suggested JK Rowling could face a tidal wave of hate crime accusations (Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

Battle of ideas

I was raised in a Scotland where previously it was preferred to champion the cause of freedom of speech, including the freedom to express who or what we might love or abhor. The dominant and confident belief was that in the battle of ideas reason would triumph, providing for love to drive out hate without sacrificing our critical faculties to analyse and reassess our laws, our institutions or our personal and collective behaviour.

Thus we were able to have religious reformations and accept the ebb and flow of new religious faiths; spread our democratic franchise beyond levels of male property ownership to empower both sexes by age; and liberalise legally restricted social norms on marriage, sexual preferences and practices without huge divisions in society.

I don’t personally happen to think we have always got those changes absolutely right, but due to the process of having open debate around change – to which I could choose to participate in and cast a vote for or against – I was always willing to accept the outcome and occasionally give losers consent when my view lost out.

It was only those who threatened, appealed for, incited or practiced physical violence – that would quite properly be subject to the force of the law. Prosecution of those responsible for violence or the threat of it was a red line people could understand and overwhelmingly support.

Seeking to cross that line required an evidenced degree of hatred or at the very least a conspiratorial lust for power – making it possible to police. Broadening and obscuring that line, as Yousaf’s Hate Crime law does, by letting a complaint be established by the feelings and perceptions of the self-defined victim, rather than hard legal tests, is a great folly.

The law gives various groups preference above those who have no such privilege and by bottling up the expression of people’s own thoughts so they might not say or share what they think, nor listen to or laugh at the thoughts of others – even privately in their own home – will build up a well of dissent and deeper hatred that has no release until it goes pop!

Infantile warning against hateful thoughts

Add to this political and legal theatre of the absurd the propensity for the state to make a bad situation worse and we now face the weaponisation of the Hate Crime law as it comes into force. Our state police, Police Scotland, has in its own preparations and training for the law’s enforcement from April Fool’s Day identified comedians and entertainers as potential sources of hate crime acts – despite the political assurances that comedy and theatre, would be above a high bar of proof before prosecution.

Going even further our state Police Scotland has created a faux-furry character as an infantile warning against having hateful thoughts – but in so doing attaching those thoughts explicitly to white males. If the police chose to abandon Tufty as the means to teach children how to cross a road why do they think a sub-optimal shaggy muppet will teach adults not to hate?

This is the same state Police Scotland who, for their own training on possible transgender hate, has also created a parody protagonist that is clearly modelled on a twisted and distorted (indeed a hateful) representation of the writer JK Rowling.

Why, if the police are to be seen as dispassionate observers applying the law equally, are they profiling a world-renowned writer, entertainers and white males as likely criminals?

All of this would be bad enough were it not for the obvious possibility that – with the Hate Crime’s legal definitions yet to be tested in court, with the tests for hate possibly being too low and too opaque, and with the strong likelihood of complaints being circulated and judged by our social media-driven news agenda – the law creates huge perverse incentives for vexatious complaints to be made against innocent targets of political activists.

Giving further encouragement to public shaming of innocents, our state Police Scotland has said it will investigate every complaint under the new law, when it lacks capacity to investigate burglaries and thefts. Thus a choice making hate crime a priority has already been made, surely confirming Police Scotland as a political extension of the state.

It is being said on social media a tidal wave of complaints against JK Rowling is a possibility. This is not just because Rowling has been steadfast in defending her entirely legitimate thoughts and expressions but because but she is an international-level figure that haters wish to be seen to take down. Rather than prevent the expression of hate Yousaf’s law is set to encourage more of it – all while we abandon freedom of speech and reasoned debate.

Championed by Humza Yousaf as Justice Secretary and voted for by all the parties except the Conservatives, this bad law is indelibly linked to the First Minister more than anyone else.

Political calamity has followed Humza Yousaf in every role he has had responsibility for, yet for all his embarrassing faux-pas, gaffes and failures the Hate Crime law has the potential to be his very own poll tax. Namely a contribution to his political demise providing an unwelcome political epitaph to describe his damaging legacy from which there is no escape.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments

Humza Yousaf’s hate crime law could be his very own poll tax epitaph - Brian Monteith

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