The Independence Dream is Over

Sturgeon’s place in history will instead be as the leader whose policies placed a double rapist in a women’s prison

Nothing succeeds like success, they say - except in Scottish politics. Until recently, Nicola Sturgeon was a powerful political leader at the top of her game. Under her leadership, which lasted for over eight years, the SNP came to dominate politics at every level in Scotland, with more MPs and more MSPs than all the unionist parties combined.  The SNP even dominates the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities following last year’s council elections. Yet the SNP’s longest-serving and first female First Minister since the creation of the Scottish Parliament is now gone and nationalists across Scotland are waking up to the likelihood that she has taken their hopes of independence for Scotland with her. 

This week has been a personal tragedy for Nicola Sturgeon, though not the one she referred to in her moist-eyed Jacinda Ardern tribute statement on Wednesday. A lifelong feminist,  she will be remembered as the First Minister who placed a double rapist in a woman’s prison.  She barely alluded to the chaos of her transgender policy in her Bute House address, but everyone in the party knows that it was Isla Bryson who was in large measure responsible for the FMs precipitate departure from office this week.  At least that’s how history will record it.  Nicola Sturgeon was simply unable to admit that the rapist Adam Graham was a man even as she ordered him to be placed in a male jail.  Every press conference was becoming dominated by this single issue.  

The Gender Recogniton Reform Bill was supposed to be Nicola Sturgeon’s enduring legacy but it is now her epitaph. The UK government has been vindicated in blocking it on the grounds that Self-ID could endanger women’s protections under the UK Equality Act. At least two thirds of Scottish voters agree with Rishi Sunak, and Keir Starmer,  that allowing 16 year olds to change their legal sex at will with no medical intervention is medically and morally wrong. 

That is bad enough. But her party is now left in limbo, unable to process what has happened, not just to her flagship self-ID bill - which must surely be scrapped whatever the SNP President Mike Russell thinks - but to the independence cause itself. Nicola Sturgeon insists that she has dedicated her life to this cause, but it looks as if she has set independence back a generation.  Let us examine precisely how.