Starmer and Swinney aren't gender extremists, just incompetent cowards

UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who once agreed that ‘trans women are women’, was one of the few senior politicians to admit he had got it wrong

Call me naïve, but I had expected some sort of mea culpa for the debacle over sex and gender that our politicians have presided over in recent years. Last week’s Supreme Court ruling could not have been clearer: sex in the 2010 Equality Act means biological sex, and even with a gender recognition certificate, a man remains a man for the purposes of the law.

This is exactly what women campaigners, including For Women Scotland, have been arguing for a decade – yet women have lost jobs, been hounded out of their chosen professions, endured death threats, and been spat on. A heartfelt apology is the least they deserve.

The architect of Scotland’s failed policy of self-ID, Nicola Sturgeon, has been conspicuous by her absence, only emerging on Easter Monday morning in a gym selfie. The sight of the former First Minister clad in tight Lycra was enough to put me off my breakfast.

Keir Starmer and John Swinney have demonstrated the same lack of backbone on the gender question (Picture: Andy Buchanan/WPA pool) | Getty Images

Sorry is the hardest word

I wanted her to apologise for calling Scottish women transphobes, not push her sweaty efforts to get fitter onto my Instagram feed. But sorry really is the hardest word for Sturgeon – perhaps she is saving her fulsome apology for her memoirs.

I was slightly more hopeful when I entered the public gallery at Holyrood on Tuesday afternoon to hear a statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice. A tad foolish of me as it turned out. Shirley-Anne Somerville was, and I presume remains, one of Sturgeon’s most enthusiastic fangirls, so I should have realised she was never going to contradict her old boss.

Her mealy-mouthed statement said nothing beyond telling MSPs that the Scottish Government was going to meet with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on Thursday. Even a direct question from Alba’s Ash Regan, asking how the government had got the policy so wrong and let down Scottish women so badly was brushed aside. “I think that it is important that we look at the tone in all of this,” said Somerville, pointlessly.

A ‘manager, not a leader’

On Wednesday, Kemi Badenoch displayed the exuberant personality that won her the Tory leadership contest last November, but which has been missing of late. In response to Keir Starmer’s anodyne non-answers on the Supreme Court ruling, she quipped, “The truth is the Prime Minister doesn’t have the balls” to admit he was wrong.

Nor did he have “the balls” to apologise to Rosie Duffield, the former Labour MP and women’s rights campaigner who now sits in the Commons as an independent. Starmer spurned Badenoch’s plea to say sorry to Duffield for “hounding her out of the Labour party, simply for telling the truth”, rather proving his former party colleague’s oft-made point that he is a “manager, not a leader”.

Moving on to Thursday, First Minister John Swinney came under pressure from the Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay. “Politicians have a duty to hold up their hands and admit their mistakes. So will John Swinney finally apologise to the women of Scotland?" he asked.

Swinney showed the same lack of backbone as Starmer. “The Scottish Government accepts the judgment of the Supreme Court,” came his reply. So no apology from that quarter either, though he did remind MSPs several times that his government was meeting with the EHRC later in the day.

Cynical support

One seasoned observer of the UK’s political scene described her erstwhile colleagues’ response as “shameful”. Johann Lamont, a lifelong feminist and a Labour MSP for more than 20 years, was damming in her criticism. “Enablers like John Swinney and Keir Starmer didn’t believe in gender identity ideology but it was no skin off their noses, so they let those who did have what they wanted,” she said. “Their cynicism in their initial support means they now cannot credibly argue the new position.”

Nor, it seems, can they bring themselves to say sorry, as Lamont pointed out: “If they did care about women, of course, they would apologise to nurse Sandie Peggie and all the other women hounded and bullied, but they have no guiding principles to help them.”

But there is one senior political figure who may have some principles, even “balls”. The UK Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, once an enthusiast for the now discredited theory that ‘trans women are women’, admitted on Thursday that he had got it wrong.

“Given some of the rough discourse we’ve had on these issues in recent years, I don’t think we lose anything by having a bit of humility to say, ‘Actually, I wish we’d listened.’" he said. Feminist campaigner Venice Allan spoke for thousands of women when she posted on X: “I bloody love Wes.”

Out of touch with real life

Back to the much-vaunted meeting between the Scottish Government and the EHRC. It was cancelled by the regulator only hours before it was due to start. The EHRC pointed out that the meeting had been arranged weeks ago and was to discuss concerns over the provision of single-sex spaces by Scotland’s health boards.

They revealed that the Scottish Government had only asked to include the Supreme Court judgment on April 23, the day after Somerville suggested that the fallout from the ruling was the main purpose of the meeting.

The EHRC explained that, as it had not yet discussed the judgment with the UK Government, it was “not appropriate to enter into a discussion with Scottish Government ministers at this stage”. Duplicity or incompetence by Scottish ministers? I couldn’t possibly comment.

To huge fanfare, at least from the SNP, Swinney hosted a summit on Wednesday to discuss the threat of extremism in Scottish politics. The evidence from this week, where he and his ministers refused to apologise for the biggest policy failure of recent years and bungled an attempt to sort out the mess, suggests the problem lies elsewhere.

It is not that our politics are becoming too extreme, but that the majority of politicians – not least the SNP government – are out-of-touch with real life and, to be blunt, incompetent cowards.