Sarwar and Swinney must now accept the circle cannot be squared on gender debate - Euan McColm

PA

There were so many political car crashes, last week, the Scottish Parliament’s starting to resemble a junkyard. Everywhere you turn, someone’s limping from the crumpled wreckage of an interview.

The pile-ups started after both First Minister John Swinney and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar decided - following a prolonged period of cowardly silence - to address the chaos caused by gender ideology. Each, in their own unique way, handled things dreadfully.

Both men swerved to avoid their roles in allowing crank activists to erode the rights of women but, no matter how sharply they jerked their wheels, they couldn’t prevent themselves smashing head-on into the consequences of their foolishness.

The case of nurse Sandie Peggie - whose tribunal claim for discrimination and harassment against NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman with whom she was obliged to share a changing room at work, will continue in July - has fully focused voters’ minds on the issue of self-ID. It is hugely unpopular, with fewer than a third in favour.

When, in December 2022, then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon championed reform of the Gender Recognition Act to allow anyone to simply declare themselves the legally-recognised sex of their choosing, Sarwar whipped his MSPs to support her.

In common with Sturgeon and the Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton, Sarwar ignored the concerns of campaigners against changing the law. When it was pointed out to him that self-ID would undermine women’s right to single-sex spaces, he paid no heed. When Labour MSPs Claire Baker and Carol Mochan - to their great and enduring credit - voted against the Gender Recognition Reform bill, they lost their front-bench seats. Fellow shadow cabinet members Michael Marra and Pauline McNeill, having made clear to Sarwar and the other members of the Holyrood Labour group that they thought the proposed law mad, stayed away from the Scottish Parliament on the day of the vote.

In December 2022, the Scottish Labour leader believed backing self-ID was essential. Last week, he admitted - kind of - that he’d got that wrong.

Appearing alongside his deputy Jackie Baillie on the Holyrood Sources podcast, Sarwar declared his support for Peggie and the right of all women to have access to single sex spaces on the basis of biology. This was something he’d always been clear about. Apparently.

Sarwar went on to say that, had he known two years ago what he knows now, he and his party would not have backed gender law reform.

As if gaslighting the women who’d implored him to listen in 2022 wasn’t pitiful enough, Sarwar went on to say he’d taken the word of the Scottish Government that the legislation he was supporting did not harm women’s rights.

It was the sort of performance that haunts a politician. He will, years from now, wake in the night and remember the time he deployed the “I’m too gullible to be let out on my own” defence.

It appears that, having watched Sarwar squirm and humiliate himself, John Swinney thought “I’ll have me some of that.”

The First Minister told us he was fully in favour of single-sex spaces which, given the national mood, was the very least he could do. But, having begun to reassure us he understood the issues, Swinney went on to say he had absolutely no regrets about backing the hated Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which was struck down weeks after the Holyrood vote by then Tory Scottish Secretary Alister Jack on the grounds it was incompatible with the UK-wide Equality Act.

During First Minister’s Question Time on Thursday, an unusually foul-tempered Swinney quoted that act, which allows for the exclusion of trans people from single sex spaces in some circumstances.

The First Minister’s tetchy responses to questions from Tory leader Russell Findlay were misjudged. Swinney genuinely seemed not to grasp this is a matter that’s engaged and enraged voters.

I warn any opponents to gender ideology who are in the slightest reassured by the First Minister’s replies to questions last week not to get their hopes up. Yes, Swinney may have restated his support for single sex spaces but the government he leads is currently, in a case brought by feminist campaign group For Women Scotland, arguing that biological sex doesn’t actually matter.

FWS has asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether, under the terms of the Equality Act, someone with a gender recognition certificate should be considered a woman. Swinney’s government insists possession of the necessary paperwork changes one’s sex “for all purposes”.

Had Swinney offered even a crumb of succour to Sandie Peggie this week, he’d have undermined his government’s ongoing - and hugely expensive - legal fight to have biological males allowed into female spaces.

If Sarwar reckoned he’d had a bad week, a vote on the first day of Scottish Labour conference on Friday was to compound his misery.

Delegates rejected a motion - backed by the leadership - arguing that single-sex spaces for children should be “based on biology”. This was a decision both politically foolish and morally repugnant.

A few hours later, the Equality and Human Rights Commission wrote to both NHS Fife and health secretary Neil Gray, reminding them of the legal obligation to provide single-sex spaces for women.

It was not a good week for self-identifying “progressive” male politicians.

Swinney and Sarwar fear the wrath of activists within their respective parties’ ranks. Their cowardice is behind their failure to speak unequivocally on gender issues. But they will never satisfy the angry minority without undermining women’s safety.

Sarwar and Swinney must accept the circle cannot be squared, that there is absolutely no balance to be struck between the necessary rights of women and the demands of trans activists.

Anas Sarwar and John Swinney can’t keep driving in two directions at once on this issue and expect not to keep crashing. It’s time for them to pick a lane and stick to it.