A few short sentences on page 33 of the Scottish National Party’s election manifesto promised to “improve and simplify the process by which a trans person can obtain legal recognition”.
The butterfly effect of that election pledge led Scottish politics on a path to chaos, culminating in the sudden resignation of First Minister Humza Yousaf.
Much like the Scottish independence question, the debate surrounding gender identity has forced people into two camps with insults flying in both directions.
The 2021 Holyrood election resulted in an impressive fourth successive victory for the SNP, even if the party fell just one seat short of a parliamentary majority. The pro-independence Scottish Greens’ MSPs are natural allies for the SNP, and traditionally back the party in most votes.
So rather than operate another minority government, then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon decided to start a power-sharing agreement with them – known as the Bute House Agreement, named after the official residence of the first minister in Edinburgh. Reforming the Gender Recognition Act was part of the deal, and less than a year later a bill was put before parliament.
As it progressed through the system, there were endless column inches, social media fights, protests, and counter-protests about the bill.
Unlikely alliances were formed. In October 2022 author JK Rowling called SNP rebel Ash Regan a “heroine” for resigning as Sturgeon’s community safety minister over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
That’s the JK Rowling who donated £1million to keep Scotland as part of the UK during the 2014 independence referendum, and the Ash Regan who – in perhaps the most bizarre policy idea of recent times – later suggested building a giant “readiness thermometer” to show how close Scotland was to leaving the UK.
And at the same time it split parties. Regan would go on to join Alex Salmond’s Alba Party, and eight other nationalists also opposed the reform in the final vote in December 2022.
Scottish Labour, which backed gender reform in its election manifesto, saw two of its MSPs break the whip to vote against the legislation – while others were known to have reservations. And while the Tory contingent were largely opposed to the bill, three MSPs voted in favour.
Then, as is inevitable in Scottish politics, a constitutional battle broke out. The UK Government vetoed it, the Scottish Government went to court – and lost – and hundreds of thousands of pounds ended up in lawyers’ pockets.
But that wasn’t the end of it. A new hate crime law which came into effect earlier this April included transgender identity as a protected characteristic, but not biological sex (with misogyny the subject of separate forthcoming legislation), sparking a fresh round of demonstrations.
And then came the Cass Review, which looked at gender identity services for under-18s in England. It led to a pause in Glasgow on new prescriptions for puberty hormone suppressants for young people with gender dysphoria.
While Yousaf conceded in a radio interview that “when it comes to the prescribing of medicine, clinicians are best placed – not politicians, government ministers or myself as first minister,” Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie, at the time still a government minister, refused to say if he accepted the Cass review’s findings because he had “seen far too many criticisms” of it.
The Rainbow Greens representative group of LGBTQIA+ members launched an open letter calling for an emergency meeting to consider withdrawing from government. Further cracks opened over the SNP’s decision to scrap climate change targets.
The meeting was set for May. But Humza Yousaf wasn’t prepared to wait that long.
When he woke up last Thursday morning, he hoped he would be sending a message of strength as he decided to order Harvie and fellow Green minister Lorna Slater to Bute House to unceremoniously sack them.
It proved to be one of the biggest miscalculations in Holyrood’s history. By the end of that day the SNP leader was left fighting for his political life.
The fury of the Green MSPs clearly took him by surprise, although it really shouldn’t have, and opposition parties swiftly jumped into action to capitalise on this.
Yousaf tried to fight on, but ironically found himself reliant on the support of Ash Regan, the gender reform critic he once dismissed as “no great loss” when she left the SNP.
His authority evaporated by the hour.
Many of the challenges Yousaf faced during his short tenure were not of his making, but it was his personal decision to infuriate the Greens that sealed his fate.
Contenders being talked up for the top job include social conservative Kate Forbes and the more socially liberal Jenny Gilruth, who hold very different views on issues like same-sex marriage and gender reform.
Could John Swinney, the former deputy first minister who voted for reform, unite the factions?
Whatever the outcome, SNP strategists will be desperately hoping that the next leadership contest is less messy than the last one, or that there isn’t a contest at all.
The party’s opponents – particularly a resurgent Scottish Labour – will be relishing the weeks and months ahead. But nobody is a winner from a gender debate which became so toxic.
Alan Roden is Co-CEO of Quantum Communications and a former communications director for Scottish Labour
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