Scotland Secretary Alister Jack, London’s man in Scotland and agent for the UK Government has announced that he is moving to block the controversial GRR Bill after taking legal advice. It is the first time that UK ministers have used a Section 35 order which stops a Scottish bill from becoming law. They have done this due to fears that it impacts UK-wide Equalities Act of 2010. This very possibility was pointed out to Ms Sturgeon on numerous occasions. Like so many other things she chose to ignore the advice.
She used her NHS media briefing on Monday to attack Westminster saying it would be an “outrage” for them to do this.She went on to say, it was a ‘full frontal attack on Scottish democracy.’ She went further, adding that her SNP Government would “defend the legislation and stand up for Scotland’s Parliament.” She has also indicated that the SNP Government will likely mount a legal challenge.
Many of her MPs and MSPs were equally angered by this UK intervention, here is just a tiny selection.
As many of us suspected this rebuff on GRR has incensed our First Minister and her cabal of Gender zealots more than the Supreme Court rejection of an independence referendum. On that day she announced that she would hold a special conference some 116 days later to discuss what actions her party would take over Scotland’s Constitutional future. No such delay over GRR. She is already being affronted and mounting a legal challenge, suddenly she and her biology denying crew are finding their voices over Scotland’s lack of democracy. The same voices that have been fairly muted since 23rd November 2022 well really since November 2014!
I am glad something has managed to shake them out of their lethargy! For too long they have done nothing about anything except GRR. Perhaps their obsession over gender issues will finally get them to put some effort into independence now. Could this be the trigger for the SNP to start a real and serious Independence campaigning?
Let me though make my position very clear. I wrote an article earlier this month entitled Conflicted. The strapline I think describes my feelings perfectly about what has now happened with the GRR Bill.
Many others and I have been against this legislation from the outset. Both the GRR and the Hate Crime Bill are terrible pieces of law. Draconian, science and biology denying doesn’t come close to describing these ideological driven Acts.
What the intervention from Westminster has shown is that Ms Sturgeon is a serial failure at everything she touches. She has yet again shown her lack of strategic nous. She is out of her depth when it comes to taking on our imperial masters. Sadly, if only that was her only fault. There is not a single part of Scotland’s governance that is operating efficiently. Everything under her control is in a state of flux.There is not a single achievement of note. The reason is simple. We have Cabinet Secretaries promoted way above their abilities solely on the fact that they were loyal, biology deniers that wouldn’t threaten Sturgeon or her Stonewall ideology.
She inherited from Alex Salmond everything that was required to take Scotland out of the Union. A slick well oiled Government succeeding in every aspect of Scottish governance. True progressive policies enacted like free University education, free prescriptions, bus passes, free home care for the elderly, and many more too. She had a party with 115,000 members and growing. A YES Campaign group in the tens of thousands that was the envy of political parties throughout the democratic world. They were ready at the drop of a hat to campaign for independence, indeed, in 2015 they proved that when the SNP won 56 out of 59 Scottish Parliamentary seats at Westminster.
A united political party with a healthy bank balance and a country ripe for the next phase of its independence struggle. A new independence media taking on and beating the dead tree press and the BBC. A government in London that was terrified of all those many assets she had at her fingertips. The Unionists were scared that this movement would be deployed against it and its imperial domination of Scotland. They needn’t have worried. Although none of us knew at the time, we had replaced a political giant with an ideological, incompetent pygmy!
One by one she has destroyed each and every part of her massive political inheritance.The money has gone, the party membership is falling daily. The YES Movement is splintered and decimated by eight years of neglect and abuse by Sturgeon and her tiny cabal of sycophantic amatures. The new media although still here has been abused and attacked more by so-called independence/SNP supporters than by the unionists. Her three ‘Flagship policies’ of GRR, HCB and Independence Referendum lie in tatters. (I have listed them on purpose in order of her priorities!)
On independence she is asking us now to give her one more mandate at the UK General Election in 2024. Just a few days ago it was to be an independence Plebiscite, now it is to be a mandate to ask for a Section 30 Referendum, which of course, would be rejected out of hand by Sunak or Starmer! She adds insult to injury daily with her cowardice and lack of strategic sense.
Ms Sturgeon’s actions and ‘results’ give way to a footballing analogy. She is the manager of one of the Old Firm. She has everything she needs to be successful, players, money, coaches, fans, elite training facilities, sports scientists, dieticians et al. Yet in the space of a few weeks her team playing at home has been knocked out of one Cup competition by Kelty Hearts and the other cup by Bonnyrigg Rose! (No disrespect intended to the two teams mentioned!) What do you think the board of directors at Ibrox or Celtic Park would do if this happened?
Correct! This is exactly what the SNP membership, the defacto Board of Directors need to do and immediately. Thank her for her services and show her the door. She has been an abject failure at every single aspect of party and government management. When we ask her achievements all anyone can ever come up with after eight years is baby boxes! The reality behind that one too was Alex Salmond asked Mark MacDonald to investigate it with Finland! (Maybe that is why Mark was so cruelly and unfairly treated by Sturgeon!)
What Scotland needs now more than ever is leadership, something that Sturgeon is incapable of displaying. Indeed, she has never shown it. She is a bully and a micro manager nothing more. This new leadership needs to immediately call a Scottish Constitutional Convention. He or she needs to reunite the YES Movement by holding out the hand of friendship to all independence parties and organisations. This Convention needs to meet at the earliest possible date and commence to formulate a strategy that will move us towards independence. Collapsing Holyrood in time for an October independence Plebiscite as promised sounds a good place to start. Indeed, we need to guarantee to the Scottish people from hereon all legislation from our Parliament good or bad will never again be struck down by foreign politicians from a foreign parliament. Independence is the only way we can ensure that!
While I detest this GRR Bill, I am opposed to Westminster interfering in Scotland’s business. Perhaps if Ms Sturgeon had listened to others instead of only listening to Stonewall and her TRA zealots all this could have been avoided. We warned this was likely and for that we were attacked and abused by her child Praetorian guards. She is beyond rehabilitation now. Neither the Bill nor Sturgeon’s leadership are now saveable or desirable. Both have to be thrown into the bucket labelled not fit for purpose!
Help me beat the censors.
Since I first expressed my opposition to this entire GRA nonsense I have found myself being banned and blocked on social media platforms. Even here many people who have subscribed to my blogs no longer recieve notifications when I post a new blog.It has grown worse since February last year when I made my views as a peacenik clear and refused to join in with the war mongers and their Russophobia. I have opposed wars my entire life and will not for the sake of popularity jettison my principles. If you agree with my musings in these blogs I would ask that you share my blogs wherever you can on social media and help me beat the censors and war mongers.
Absolutely. All of it. yes.
Excellent article BB. Exactly how I felt. As you know I am against Indy and campaigned against it vigorously but with the belief that if the people said yes so be it. I thought at that time that the SNP were doing a good job. It was up to Labour to get its act together. What has transpired in the SNP now horrified me. It horrified me that this gov led by Sturgeon would run the country. I do not believe all the guff about them stepping down after Indy. They being what they are IMO that is corrupt and useless have made me double down on my belief in not wanting Indy. I have commented on quite a few of my Labour colleagues SM posts telling them to for christ’s sake read the room. Waiting on my letter now.lol.
Sadly for you Sandy, SLAB seem incapable of getting their act together. Now that Starmer has criticised the GRR Bill in its present form it will be highly amusing watching Sarwar row back and start doing what his London masters say. I will be waiting, laptop at the ready to ridicule and expose his lily livered compliance.!
Totally with you on that BB. Going to be interesting. I am treading on shaky ground commenting in Labour posts but I have been warning my colleagues for months about this. Some of them have taken no interest in what has been happening and are now moaning about the intervention. I have told them if any of this guff is on any leaflets they can deliver them themselves. You are right though this whole episode is going to be really interesting.
I’m already imagining / dreaming, of the SNP, with a new leader, working in cooperation with the Alba party, and all other pro-indy parties, shaking the UK to it’s very foundations. If I allow my imagination to wander even further, Alex Salmond would hand over the Reigns at the Alba Party, and returns to lead the SNP once more, what a team that would be. Holyrood De-facto referendum in October, SNP1 – Alba 2, BOOM ! Maybe that’s not realistic, maybe Alex wouldn’t want to go back, but I’m only dreaming, and I haven’t felt able to do that in the last few years, as we’ve lived through the nightmare that Nicola Sturgeon has created.
An excellent post Roddy. I belong to the Scottish Feminist Network and you can imagine our feelings when the Bill was passed. When the news broke yesterday I was happy and sad. Happy, because women have known for several years that any Bill allowing self-ID would be extremely detrimental to women and girls. Now it has been stopped and either a pause and major rethink is enforced or the Bill is binned. Sad because many women would have preferred our arguments and peaceful protests to have succeeded in persuading Holyrood to safeguard women and girls in any Bill. They did the opposite and opened the doors to a very frightening future for us. Even now it will not stop many of the changes that organisations have made to the detriment of females. They refused to hear a word we said let alone listen. WM has done the deed instead and is seen as the baddie in all of this. That is not the case but the FM will make capital out if this. She and her zealots are responsible for the Bill and for their intransigence in refusing to listen to all voices. It is yet another of her failures with which she will play the victim card. Scotland needs no more of her or her cabal. When she goes they too must go otherwise the cancer in the SNP will continue its spread.
Nicola Sturgeon only success to date was this controversial GRR which benefits less than 1% of the population, now that isn’t very democratic.
How many failures will it take before people waken up that Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t have what it takes to run a country or deliver Independence.
She keeps picking fights for all the wrong causes and with all the wrong people at the wrong times, but its Scotland and our people who are always the losers not her or the SNP. I’m no judge but even I know now that the UKG will win and the SNP will lose and for what?
I really do believe its time for Nicola Sturgeon to go, she more of a hindrance that a benefit.
I have felt for a number of years that Sturgeon and those surrounding her were UK government plants. The plan was supposedly to demonstrate how well they could govern but, in fact, they have a record of seemingly deliberate incompetence from the Named Persons Act to the ferries fiasco. They have shown contempt for the people of Scotland with this GRR and HCB legislation. They have undermined confidence in the police and judiciary with the framing of Alex Salmond and the pursuit of Craig Murray and Mark Hirst.
Surely this is her final achievement; to get the people of Scotland to support the UK government against the Scottish government.
Exactly Dave. I never thought I’d find mysel agreeing with Jack and I’m so angry at the SNP for causing this to be the case. I now know former indy supporters who will vote No in any indyref because they don’t believe that this shower will just disapear afterwards and that this issue will only be allowed to carry on after indy.
For myself, if a “de facto” referendum means votingfor the SNP – I’m just not going to do it. I refuse to let this woman use my vote as an endorsement of her whacky, anti scientific, madcap ideals.
Wonder if she wll be the first SNP person to take a seat in the House of Lords – a reward for outstanding services to the protection of the Union. She can share a bench with her buddy Ruth the mooth.
I was shouted down for saying she should go back in 2017 I think it was with that disastrous election campaign. Turns out my gut feeling was right back then.
Great stuff, Roddy and bang on the button. I heard someone say today that the SG had taken legal advice. Really? Any lawyer worth his or her salt – in fact, a first year law student – could have told her what would happen because the GRRB was always going to clash with established UK-wide legislation. On Radio Scotland this morning, some were still denying that it clashed in any way with female and children’s rights. Some people are so absolutely deluded and narcissistic that they are incapable of seeing anyone else’s viewpoint or even appreciating that other people, with equally valid rights, exist at all. This attitude alone should warn us that the ‘trans’ lobby is totalitarian to its frilly boxers.
I have never been of the mind that sees this stuff as the distraction from independence. It has always seemed to me, since 2015, that independence has been the distraction for the SNP/Greens. They know they can’t park independence completely, but, now, challenges will put this bilge at centre stage again. It was intended to pass and, thereafter the SG and Holyrood would have become bogged down in changes to existing laws and the promulgation of new laws, all in favour of this stuff. The GRR was always just the beginning. Independence would have become a matter of carroty inducements and new mandates and variations of ‘SNP 1 & 2’ forever and a day, with many of The National letter-writers gagging for sacrifices left, right and centre – just so long as it’s not they who are being sacrificed, of course. This time, they really have bitten off more than they can chew. First the Greens and the SNP ‘woke’ cohort to go. If the SNP wants to survive as a party, it will have to undergo a dry clean.
If you look at the Wings post today you will see references showing the SNP Scot Gov had plenty legal warnings but just ignored them also references from Roddy Dunlop on why the GRR was never within the Scot Gov’s competence anyway, it all points really to the SNP just wanting another legal fight with WM one that Scottish Taxpayers will have to pay for with money that could have been spent on the poor and struggling but the SNP being just a protest party don’t really care much for the people of Scotland.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-more-that-i-saw-you-burning/
Referring to the SNP as just wanting another fight with Westminster or referring to them as just a protest party is very much unionist tropes!
Will have a read, Christine. The only advice the SNP/Greens listen to is that of Scottish Stonewall. This has been a completely unnecessary piece of legislation in the way is has been presented. No, I do not believe either that it was within the competence of the Scottish parliament, and it was absolutely essential that the UKG step in because this would, if left to pass, affect every piece of legislation affecting females and children in th whole of the UK. This was obvious from day one. I didn’t think I could have any more contempt for these two parties than I already have, but I was wrong on that score. I have come to the conclusion that not only are we dealing with gross and moronic stupidity and callous disregard, but also something else going on.
The very fact that this stuff has spread so far and wide over all of the West in such a short space of time and with such tenacity smacks of people in places of influence and power having a vested interest in it passing into social policy. One the one had, we have the very wealthy corporatists and globalists who are funding it, and, on the other, we have the enablers whose motivation might well be something much more below the belt, if you take my meaning. I have said before that sociopaths and psychopaths brought about the crash of the banking system because it suited them to do so; I think we are looking at something similar here. Money and sex are the two motivators for behaviours like this. I have never believed the “there’s only a handful” lie.
Like the gun hanging on the wall in yon theatrical production: S35 was always in the Scotland Act, cocked and ready for use. Which begs the question: where are the crazies taking their legal advice from?
Stonewall, Josef, through their diversity champions. The only groups that have had any impact on this legislation is Scottish Stonewall, the Scottish Youth LGBTQ+ and others of a similar mindset. Women’s groups have been ignored. Also, does anyone else recall the promise of special legislation for females that Dame Helen Kennedy was supposed to be researching and advising on? She, too, is up to her oxters in this stuff. There has only ever been one side because both the SNP and Greens were determined, and have been since 2015, that this stuff should pass into law.
BUT don’t forget that Sturgeon FAILED MISERABLY as a solicitor – which is why I never expected much from her. When someone fails in their chosen profession don’t expect a brilliant career elsewhere. What I find difficult to accept is that worthwhile politicians did not see through her odd personality.
All heartbreakingly true Roddy. The chances we had thrown away by an incompetent. I believe she is a unionist to her very ones.She can lie through her eyes teeth without doing much as a stutter a blush or a fringe of guilt. She has destroyed our country’s reputation worldwide. Or judiciary and police force. Our reputation for being fair and neutral in any war. It breaks my heart. So much lost by an egotistical self-serving despot and a bampot to boot.
I’ve never heard anyone say “Nicola never fooled me” although there may have been some who were genuinely never fooled by her I certainly wasn’t one of them, there was a time when I thought she walked walked on water I believed she was the one to lead us over the finish line and deliver us from this rancid union.
I can’t remember what act of betrayal finally convinced me she was not what she appeared, there’s been so many, even the very obvious conspiracy against Alex Salmond wasn’t enough at least not initially, but as time passed and more evidence came to the fore it became undeniable that she was up to her neck in it, that realisation broke my heart and and broke my spirit, because she will never deliver independence because she just another disgusting traitor in a long list of disgusting traitors our country has managed to produce over the centuries.
The more things change the more they stay the same
I was at a rally to welcome her in my home town and I too thought that we were well on the road to indy and that it was a safe plan under her leadership. What did disrturb me slightly was the US style of her introduction onto the stage. The loud music designed to whip everyone up into a frenzy. I’ve never been a fan of celebrity culture and this is exactly what it was like. By the 2017 election I was beginning to wonder what the hell she was up to but would still defend her against unionists. Now I just wish she would go and feel she has made me and others look like idiots for believing her and defendng her.
Why unionists don’t like her I don’t understand – she is their friend in this fight.
It really causes despair wherever I look – I will never vote Green , I will not vote SNP in its present form and I wonder who votes for Stonewall. I have never seen Stonewall stand in an election so why this influence?
Thankyou for this article – I wonder if anyone in the SNP is interested in polls? They should be!
Pretty much what I have been feeling, Roddy. I too have been conflicted. But when it came down to it, I had to consider the harm being done to women & children. And I cannot possibly let it pass.
So – while I do not ‘side’ with tories/WM, neither do I get upset that WM has stepped in to stop the legislation. It HAS TO be stopped. And while some folks are saying Scots should settle this issue ‘in house’, I cannot for the life of me see or think of one single Scots person that could persuade Sturgeon & her band of wokey nincompoops to pause, listen & reframe their policy. There is NO WAY that woman is going to be stopped by ANYONE in Scotland, for any reason. And no other party has anything with which they can use as a lever to make SNP stop. She will get her own way, whatever it takes, if left to do so. That is her MO & we’ve seen it time & again. NOTHING pushes her to do other than what SHE HERSELF decides to do.
Thus, much as I hate to say it, I have to be glad that WM is going to bully her into pausing the bill & hopefully kill it. Or at the very least, make Scotgov consider a range of amendments that mean women & children may be protected.
I’m for Independence. I have been so from the time I entered my teen years and that wasn’t yesterday!! I can’t imagine wanting anything else for my Country. But this isn’t an either/or question. Being happy WM stepped in to kill this bill doesn’t mean I’m no longer for Independence. That’s a total non-starter. It just means someone had to stop SNP allowing our children to be harmed (even without our knowledge) and someone has. While I don’t support the tories, I’m not going to decline their kind offer to do so, either. That was sarcasm, in case someone mistakes that for anything other! 😉 There was nothing ‘kind’ about their offer. Scots, even those such as myself who are glad they’ve intervened, know this FULL WELL. We’re not stupid. I believe they think we’ll reward them with our vote. Will I hell as like! WM ‘uses’ us, Scotland, often enough. Time for pay-back.
Well said, Roddy!