Yousaf makes Self-ID the defining issue in his leadership bid. Why?

In the first SNP hustings the health secretary was the only candidate still promising to fight the A35 block on the GRR Bill

.Apres moi le deluge, or as we say in Scotland, it never rains but it pours. And it has been raining hard on the Scottish National Party following the hasty departure of the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon

The trans issue continues to hang like a cloud over the race to replace her. The “continuity” candidate, the health secretary, Humza Yousaf, has promised to proceed with the stalled Gender Recognition Reform Bill, despite its manifest unpopularity. He says he will fight the UK government’s block on the bill under Section 35 of the Scotland Act.

Like Nicola Sturgeon he seems determined to make this the defining issue in his campaign. Both his rivals, Kate Forbes and Ash Regan, have made clear they will not challenge Section 35 and are happy to see the GRR Bill scrapped or radically altered to ensure the protection of women’s single sex spaces.

Well, if Yousaf is serious he needs to learn a bit about the legislation upon which he is staking his political credibility. Right now he seems to be very confused about it. In an interview with LBC this week he claimed that the policy of self-declaration has been the law “for years and years”. This was no slip of the tongue. Yousaf has previously suggested that the Scottish Prison Service was only following the law in remanding Isla Bryson, the double rapist,  to Cornton Vale women’s prison.

Self ID is emphatically not the law of the land. He was presumably referring to the original 2004 Gender Reform Act which allowed transgender people to change legal sex. This is not by Self ID.  Under  the 2004 Act, transgender people seeking reassignment must convince a panel of experts that they have the medical condition called gender dysphoria, and must spend two years living in their new gender before receiving a gender recognition certificate.

Isla Bryson had no such grc. He merely announced, after he was charged with rape, that he had become a woman. The prison service accepted this at face value, not on the basis of the law, but because it was under direction to pilot Self-ID prior to the legislation.

This is an extraordinary confusion between the law and the aspirations of trans activists. And it’s not just a legal matter.  Indeed Yousaf has laid himself open to censure by the SNP LGBT cadres for misgendering Isla Bryson.  He said Bryson was “at it” and, echoing remarks from the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, and “was not really a transgender woman”.   So what was he?

Clearly Bryson is a man because he has been sent to a male prison. But Humza, like Nicole Sturgeon - and it seems the BBC - is simply incapable of using the “M” word about this male-bodied rapist.

To understand why senior politicians like Yousaf have simply stopped making sense,  we need to look in greater depth at the way extraordinary doctrine captured the Scottish political classes - and Nicola Sturgeon herself.