Sensitive Politicians

Two-headed eagle: Labour’s Starmer and Sarwar look in opposite directions

Columnist, opinionist Kevin McKenna’s new year squint, the watcher of events for independence here in pensive mood on women’s rights, and looking askance at Labour party’s Scottish branch.

LABOUR’S YEAR OF CHANGE ISN’T WHAT WE NEED

by Kevin McKenna

The advent of social media has acquainted politicians and commentators for the first time with the concept of scrutiny. Many have chafed under this public dissection of their own views. For decades they had all been sheltered from such detailed inspection of their positions. In the pre-Twitter and blogging age they’d only been required to run the gauntlet of public opinion every four or five years at electoral hustings events. Letters editors tended to shield their colleagues from anything that seemed untutored or scrofulous.

Social media changed all that and some politicians and journalists have not fared well in the heat. Those with brittle egos have taken to gas-lighting the public by accusing them of being hate-filled and malicious when they have merely expressed righteous anger in an uncompromising manner. They then flounce off their favoured platforms lifting their skirts ostentatiously as they depart like huffy Widow Twankeys. They express sorrow at the hell-hole of Twitter.

Many of them are paid handsomely for the privilege of conveying their own prejudices and preferences, or for representing us in the Scottish and UK Parliaments. Yet, at the first hint of unpleasantness or beastliness by their readers or voters they would have you believe that their gilded existences have been made intolerable and that Scotland has anger management issues.

Yet, how are the vile, uneducated public supposed to react when it’s lately become clear to them that senior politicians from all parties quite obviously hold them in contempt and take them for idiots? We saw the beginning of this during the first independence referendum when various Unionist politicians attempted to sell the lie that simply by advocating for self-determination was divisive and evidence of anti-Englishness.

Since then, the list of trite and fatuous proclamations by senior UK politicians has grown at a remarkable rate. The start of the year has seen Sir Keir Starmer and his Scottish branch manager, Anas Sarwar declaring that 2023 must be a year of change. Yet neither have ventured to tell us how. Indeed, Sir Keir’s concept of change is merely to become a rather soft-focus facsimile of the Tories. Last month he suggested that there was justification for GPs tagging some asylum-seekers.

The SNP’s current strategy is to orchestrate campaigns of lies and disinformation about critics within the party who choose not to worship at the altar of Nicola Sturgeon. This has had dark consequences for some in the SNP – mainly gender-critical feminists – who now live under the constant threat of physical violence.

As the Gender Recognition Reform Bill cleared its final legislative hurdle just before Christmas it became clear that Holyrood MSPs really do think the electorate are mugs. The First Minister herself reduced three years of intense debate and consultation on the issue to an afterthought. She called it “an administrative detail”. Her deputy Angus Robertson compared the passing of the bill to Nelson Mandela’s lifetime struggle against apartheid. Of all the proclamations made by politicians who knowingly voted to diminish women’s sex-based rights this was perhaps the most foolish. And this for consciously opposing any safeguards in the bill that would not have affected trans rights in the slightest, such as preventing men accused of sexual assault from changing their sex.

Not long ago, female-only spaces – especially those being accessed by vulnerable women – were considered sacrosanct. These included prisons, hospital wards and crisis centres for sexually abused women. Now, any public sector or third sector provider will find it well-nigh impossible to ensure that women seeking their help can be guaranteed the one-to-one care of an authentic biological woman. This wasn’t merely dangerous, malicious and wrong. By deliberately throwing out some reasonable checks and balances to protect vulnerable women this entered the realms of wickedness.

When the author JK Rowling stepped in to fund just a centre where women in crisis can be cared for by other women she was met with a slew of hatred and threat, much of it encouraged by several in the SNP and Labour professional politician class. Richard Leonard, former leader of Scottish Labour, issued a long statement that challenged Mr Robertson’s for the folly of its content. He said he didn’t “believe” the legislation would deny or undermine women’s rights. He was chided by one of his more honest predecessors, Johann Lamont who said: “You may not believe it affects women’s rights. Many, many women know it does. And amongst those worst affected are the poorest and most vulnerable women. But hey. You believe.”

The MSP Joe Fitzpatrick was an abject failure as public health minister and was forced to resign in 2020 for presiding over Scotland’s drugs deaths crisis. During the gender debate he said he felt “the pain of thinking about having to be buried as someone else”. This can’t be as bad as the pain from thinking that trumpets like these are regularly promoted to high office in Scotland. What else can you expect but failure on the grand scale?

Most of Holyrood followed suit, uttering the utterly meaningless phrase “trans rights are human rights”. No one wants to deny trans rights. And any right that deliberately undermines women’s rights isn’t a right at all; it’s an abuse. Others, knowing that this legislation is dangerous and threatening, simply acted like cowards to preserve their careers.

Who knew back in 1999 that devolution would be the gateway for a multitude of these wage thieves and opportunists? These are people whose radicalism begins and ends on a Twitter thread. It pursues the path of least resistance. It’s designed to attract middle-class performance artists for whom it becomes a substitute for real action: the type that effects radical change and improvements in the daily lives of poor communities. It’s bogus in every way.

This weekend the formidable former SNP councillor Mhairi Hunter rebuked someone who claimed the SNP had harmed women’s rights more than the Taliban. You kind of take her point. Yet, only one of these governments has deliberately overseen a process of dismantling what it means to be a woman. And it’s not the Taliban.

Many look south to justify themselves and indulge in theatrical revulsion about the deeds of the Tories. Yet, at least there is a proper system of scrutiny and accountability at the top of the Tories. If their leaders are found wanting or dip beneath the standards expected of them then the rank and file members aren’t slow to jettison them. In Scotland, the SNP have discovered the Golden Mean of political power: just keep promising independence. That way, you can get away with anything and are required to achieve nothing.

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