Transgender debate: Stand Comedy Club's cancelling of Joanna Cherry's Edinburgh Festival Fringe appearance offends Scottish values – Murdo Fraser

A tolerant society is not one where everyone agrees – far from it.

A tolerant society is one where people of a variety of opinions, often deeply clashing, agree to disagree and defend each other’s right to free speech. By that measure, Scotland is becoming a less and less tolerant society.

The decision of the Stand Comedy Club to cancel Joanna Cherry MP’s appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe should frighten any of us who believe in free speech and is, in itself, a perversion of one of our most prized institutions. Ms Cherry has been cancelled not because she has some controversial views about a Celtic super-race, nor does she advocate genocide. She has been cancelled because she believes there are only two genders – female and male.

Now, if 50 years ago, a lesbian had been banned from speaking, we would look back at it as an example of the old-fashioned bigotry of our forebears. But today a lesbian woman is banned as a sign of modernity.

The stench around this decision becomes all the more cloying, because the person who owns the venue she was due to appear at is a fellow SNP MP, Tommy Shepherd – a recipient of hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money to keep his comedy clubs afloat. An elected politician who clearly does not believe that his own colleagues have the right to free speech.

That Ms Cherry should be effectively banned from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe surely offends the values of that institution. If the Edinburgh Festival is not an international event where artists from around the globe can come with fresh, innovative ideas that challenge us all, then it is nothing. The idea that it is too controversial to host a local MP who holds the view that women don’t have penises is frankly absurd.

While I am a proud Scot I do not go in for the idea of Scottish exceptionalism – or moral superiority – promoted of some of my SNP colleagues. But I have to say the idea of banning Joanna Cherry is profoundly anti-Scottish. It confounds our history.

Famously, Scotland had four universities when England had just two. Indeed, when I was a student at Aberdeen University we used to claim that the city once had, in King’s College and Marischal, as many universities as the whole of England. Those universities reached out to the continent and developed trade routes of ideas.

Joanna Cherry speaks at a For Women Scotland and Scottish Feminist Network rally outside the Scottish Parliament in December (Picture: Lesley Martin/PA)

When the Union came in 1707, arguably the most educated populace on the planet was unleashed to take advantage of an English empire. The Enlightenment which illuminated Europe started in Edinburgh. Now, by deciding that the mores of their time do not fit with ours, thinkers of that time like David Hume are dismissed in their own country not for their ideas, but for how they lived nearly three centuries ago.

What marks Scotland out as something more than just a picturesque piece of land on the northern edge of Europe are the ideas of the men and women who live here. Traditionally we have had a thirst for learning. That means we fear no ideas but embrace new thinking, analyse it, and make decisions for ourselves. But that cannot be the case if people like Joanna Cherry are cancelled because the ticket-collector at the event might be offended by what she says.

We look back at the history of other countries and wince when we think of the books burnt by repressive regimes. But we are close to a modern Scotland where those books would never have been printed for fear of offending the sensibilities of the printers.

Joanna Cherry is an articulate, educated, woman with whom I profoundly disagree on so many things. But I do not fear her. I do not fear debating with her. In fact, I relish the idea, as I suspect she would relish the idea of debating with me.

But that crucial part of a functioning democracy, and a functioning society – debate – is being stifled. The modern trend is not to challenge someone’s ideas but to question their right to have them.

I am sadly used to this in the Scottish Parliament chamber where some in the government seem to think I am disqualified from having an opinion merely by calling me a ‘Tory’. Throw in a word like ‘Linwood’ (I was at school when the car plant closed) and my opinions are supposed to be rendered redundant.

But the truth is that it is not glens or lochs or tartan or bagpipes that makes Scotland stand out – it is our ideas. The people we most celebrate are our inventors, who by their nature challenged orthodoxy rather than rolled with it. The kind of person who decides that Joanna Cherry should not be listened to is the kind of person who would have sued Alexander Fleming for making them work with mould.

We really cannot tolerate this intolerance. What some people are trying to impose upon us is a form of puritanism not seen since Oliver Cromwell. Think of the comedy shows that have disappeared from our orbit. Think of the programmes you remember fondly from the past that could not be shown today. This is not a ‘progressive’ Scotland, it is profoundly regressive. It is not Scotland the brave, it is Scotland looking out to be offended.

The Scotland that shaped me was a much more robust place. Somewhere where you fought to be heard and were listened to – even if it was just to be cut down when you stopped speaking. An egalitarian place where you had the right to be heard.

If that essence is robbed from Scotland, then we betray the country. And we take away from a country its rationality and reasoning, and replace it with an absurdity.

Murdo Fraser is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife