Why transgender politics will end another First Minister’s career unless John Swinney changes course

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has clearly realised the tide of public opinion on trans rights has shifted, but John Swinney remains defiant

Anas Sarwar’s U-turn on gender identity early this week was five years too late. His insistence that he would not have voted for the Gender Recognition Reform Bill in 2022 if he had known what he “knows now” is, how will I put it politely… mince. He knew.

His perpetual side-kick and ‘she who must be obeyed’, Dame Jackie Baillie, knew. Pam Duncan Glancy, the newly elected MSP given the task of leading Labour’s response to the Bill, knew.

They knew because women told them. Hundreds of women – from senior party figures to women’s rights campaigners – were in regular touch with the Labour leadership in the run-up to the Bill, and in the years since.

Countless briefing papers. Zoom calls. Court cases. Author and philanthropist JK Rowling, a former Labour donor, told the world – and Sarwar – why she opposed the Bill and of her support for women’s rights.

John Swinney may face the same fate as his predecessors as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell) | Getty Images

Ignoring the facts of life

Johann Lamont, once Sarwar’s boss, spoke to him. Labour Women’s Declaration lobbied the party persistently. Sarwar knew all right, he simply chose to ignore the facts of life – that human beings cannot change sex – until the polls told him it was harming his chances of becoming First Minister.

His mealy-mouthed mea culpa on Tuesday came after private focus groups and very public opinion polls showed that Labour is losing support to Reform. It also came without an apology to the women he had deliberately snubbed over the years, and whom some in his party defamed as right-wing bigots with what seemed like, at the time, his tacit approval. But worse, he did not apologise to Sandie Peggie, the NHS Fife nurse whose very public ordeal has gripped the nation in recent weeks.

If Sarwar had had the political and moral courage to stand up against Nicola Sturgeon’s gender reforms, and if he had spoken out before this week about the “organisational capture” that has infected Scotland’s public services for years – since at least 2014 when the Scottish Trans Alliance started advising the prison service – then, in all likelihood, Sandie Peggie would not have found herself in a female changing room with a male-bodied doctor. She, even more than women’s rights campaigners, has been badly let down by Scotland’s political elite.

Swinney got the law wrong

Anas Sarwar may have adopted a new direction on women’s sex-based rights, but it seems his activists are still in thrall to gender ideology, voting down a motion supporting the Cass Review yesterday. But that palls into insignificance when compared to John Swinney’s gender woes.

In a confused and confusing performance at First Minister’s Questions this week and in press interviews afterwards, he got himself into a right fankle over the law. Asked by Conservative leader Russell Findlay if women should be entitled to single-sex spaces at their work, Swinney quoted Scottish Government guidance based on the 2010 Equality Act. “These kinds of decisions must be made on a case-by-case basis. Managers must balance the needs of the trans person to use this facility against the needs of other members of staff,” he said.

Except he – and the guidance prepared, one presumes, by senior civil servants – is wrong, as more than one legal expert pointed out. Scott Wortley, a law lecturer at Edinburgh University, took to social media to tell Swinney that the relevant legislation is in fact the 1992 workplace regulations on changing, sanitation and washing facilities. These clearly instruct employers to provide separate facilities for men and women.

Increasing scepticism about trans rights

But more worryingly for the First Minister than his legal faux pas is the realpolitik of gender. A recent YouGov study shows an increasing scepticism towards transgender rights across all age groups. What was once seen as a popular, progressive cause is now turning toxic.

Even the Liberal Democrats have changed tack. Earlier this week, the party’s chief executive, Mike Dixon, told the gender critical group Liberal Voice for Women that they will no longer be denied the ability to hold fringe meetings at party conferences and their members will be “treated in the same, consistent manner as other organisations made up of party members”.

Dr Zoe Hollowood, chair of Liberal Voice for Women, said the group was relieved by the decision. “For too long gender critical members have been vilified and censured in the party for their ordinary belief in the immutability and importance of sex,” she said.

But still Swinney prevaricates. Asked after FMQs about Sandie Peggie and single-sex spaces, he used the tactic much-beloved by politicians under pressure: no comment. Meanwhile, his deputy Kate Forbes, who may not yet have abandoned her ambitions to be First Minister, was happy to express her view. “As a mother and as a woman I can say unequivocally that I support single-sex spaces, and they are a critical part of how we protect women,” she told one newspaper.

No regrets for Swinney?

Swinney was more confident – some might even say ‘courageous’ – in his support for the ill-fated gender reform bill. Despite Sarwar’s U-turn, the First Minister insisted he had done the right thing in December 2022. He said: “I do not regret my support from the GRR Bill. It was a product of careful consideration by the Scottish Government in terms of the formulation of the legislation.”

Has he learned nothing from the recent history of his party? It is only two years since his close friend Sturgeon resigned as First Minister, her stellar political career destroyed by her stubborn adherence to gender recognition reform.

It is less than 12 months since Humza Yousaf had to quit after the SNP’s coalition with the Scottish Greens collapsed, following their dismissal of the Cass Review and a ban on puberty blockers.

Could Swinney’s stubborn refusal to face facts mean he is on course to be the third First Minister in three years to fall victim to the politics of gender? He will only have himself to blame.