Meghan Gallagher is MSP for Central Scotland and Deputy Leader of the Scottish Conservatives
The shambles around Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill has highlighted characteristics of the SNP Government seldom noted in the rest of the UK, but depressingly familiar to those of us who have to contend with Nicola Sturgeon’s regime on a daily basis.
The SNP has made a habit of this. I can point to the example of bills on offensive behaviour at football, attempts to introduce ‘named persons’ for children’s safeguarding, and anti-lobbying rules that failed to take account of emails, letters, or telephone calls as other misguided attempts at virtue-signaling.
Leaving aside their content or intentions, these are hardly viewed by ordinary Scots as pieces of legislation that deserve a higher priority than schools, health, transport, housing, or the host of other, completely devolved, issues on which the Nationalist record is abysmal.
Besides the skewed priorities, there is the failure, during the passage of legislation, to ensure proper scrutiny, or to take into account any objection to the SNP line. Some of this is incompetence and some downright intransigence.
In the GRR Bill, the concerns of women’s groups, the EHRC, the UK Government, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence and Women’s Rights were simply dismissed as ‘not valid’, and numerous warnings of unintended consequences were brushed aside.
It’s a mark of the rigorous internal discipline – or, more cynically, the lack of independent thinking – within the SNP that Ash Regan, the Community Safety minister who quit over the bill, was the first minister to resign over policy since 2007.
The spotlight has understandably fallen on the Nationalists, since the party has – utterly predictably – used the triggering of the Section 35 order to confect yet another constitutional grievance. But it has also done so because Nicola Sturgeon’s incoherent position since the trans prisoners row erupted has been seized on as a very serious blow to her authority as leader.
But this legislation has also exposed a significant split between Scottish Labour and their UK party. Every party at Holyrood, other than the Scottish Conservatives, who had a free vote, imposed a whip in favour of the bill.
Indeed, at the bill’s first stage, when nine SNP MSPs refused to back it – the most significant rebellion of Nicola Sturgeon’s period in office – not a single Scottish Labour member voted against or abstained. The SNP Government faced more opposition from its own backbenchers than it did from a so-called Labour opposition. Anas Sarwar, Labour’s Scottish leader, has shown no sign of sharing Sir Keir Starmer’s concerns.
Despite the worries that a number of Labour MSPs were known to have about the bill, when push came to shove, the vast majority fell in line with the Labour whip and the SNP’s line.
In the subsequent row over its obvious clashes with the Equality Act, Scottish Labour supported the SNP’s position, despite the fact that it was their own party that devised and implemented the devolution settlement of which Section 35 was part.
Scottish Labour – not only on this issue but many others – cannot be described as an opposition party to the SNP. Their response to the Nationalists’ shield-banging has been to wheel out Gordon Brown and his proposals for yet more constitutional tinkering.
Labour doesn’t seem to have grasped the fact that, despite their constant complaints about Holyrood being “undermined”, the Nationalists have never wanted the devolution settlement to work.
It is only interested in using the devolution settlement as an opportunity to continue blaming Westminster for all failures, and to identify any successes as a further argument for independence.
Devolution did not “kill the SNP stone dead”, as George Robertson, the former Labour Scottish Secretary, claimed it would. The reason it didn’t isn’t a failing of the settlement, but because there is simply no concession, additional power, or funding that will satisfy the SNP.
It’s also that the party is enabled at Holyrood by the attitude of Scottish Labour. It’s not helped by the fact that Labour’s support in Scotland is itself divided, or at least equivocal, on independence.
But even on issues where it hopes to present itself as an opposition party – which in recent months has been almost exclusively on the SNP’s dismal handling of the wholly devolved NHS – its prescriptions and policies are virtually identical.
On others, including the GRR Bill, for which Labour is every bit as responsible as the Nationalists, they don’t even make any pretence.
It may be understandable that they should parrot the SNP’s kneejerk complaints about the wicked Westminster Tories for their own political advantage, but the result is that Labour has completely failed to hold the Scottish Government to account for its dismal record on health, education, policing, and almost every area of policy that the public cares about.
Keir Starmer actually seems to look to Nicola Sturgeon’s government for inspiration, and previously said that a UK Labour Government would introduce their own Hate Crime Act and GRR Bill.
On North Sea jobs, on prisoner voting, on rent controls, on the future of Scottish education, and on Covid laws – Labour backed the nationalist position. And at Westminster, Labour MPs abstained in the face of an SNP attempt to secure a second independence referendum.
The public in Scotland is beginning to ask “What is the point of Labour?” – and is a question as relevant to Scotland’s political future as the SNP’s dismal posturing is not.
It leaves the Scottish Conservatives as the only credible opposition to Nicola Sturgeon’s government. This particular shambles over highly contentious, ill-thought-out, and poorly examined legislation makes it obvious how necessary such opposition is.
Meghan Gallagher is MSP for Central Scotland and Deputy Leader of the Scottish Conservatives
The shambles around Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill has highlighted characteristics of the SNP Government seldom noted in the rest of the UK, but depressingly familiar to those of us who have to contend with Nicola Sturgeon’s regime on a daily basis.
The SNP has made a habit of this. I can point to the example of bills on offensive behaviour at football, attempts to introduce ‘named persons’ for children’s safeguarding, and anti-lobbying rules that failed to take account of emails, letters, or telephone calls as other misguided attempts at virtue-signaling.
Leaving aside their content or intentions, these are hardly viewed by ordinary Scots as pieces of legislation that deserve a higher priority than schools, health, transport, housing, or the host of other, completely devolved, issues on which the Nationalist record is abysmal.
Besides the skewed priorities, there is the failure, during the passage of legislation, to ensure proper scrutiny, or to take into account any objection to the SNP line. Some of this is incompetence and some downright intransigence.
In the GRR Bill, the concerns of women’s groups, the EHRC, the UK Government, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence and Women’s Rights were simply dismissed as ‘not valid’, and numerous warnings of unintended consequences were brushed aside.
It’s a mark of the rigorous internal discipline – or, more cynically, the lack of independent thinking – within the SNP that Ash Regan, the Community Safety minister who quit over the bill, was the first minister to resign over policy since 2007.
The spotlight has understandably fallen on the Nationalists, since the party has – utterly predictably – used the triggering of the Section 35 order to confect yet another constitutional grievance. But it has also done so because Nicola Sturgeon’s incoherent position since the trans prisoners row erupted has been seized on as a very serious blow to her authority as leader.
But this legislation has also exposed a significant split between Scottish Labour and their UK party. Every party at Holyrood, other than the Scottish Conservatives, who had a free vote, imposed a whip in favour of the bill.
Indeed, at the bill’s first stage, when nine SNP MSPs refused to back it – the most significant rebellion of Nicola Sturgeon’s period in office – not a single Scottish Labour member voted against or abstained. The SNP Government faced more opposition from its own backbenchers than it did from a so-called Labour opposition. Anas Sarwar, Labour’s Scottish leader, has shown no sign of sharing Sir Keir Starmer’s concerns.
Despite the worries that a number of Labour MSPs were known to have about the bill, when push came to shove, the vast majority fell in line with the Labour whip and the SNP’s line.
In the subsequent row over its obvious clashes with the Equality Act, Scottish Labour supported the SNP’s position, despite the fact that it was their own party that devised and implemented the devolution settlement of which Section 35 was part.
Scottish Labour – not only on this issue but many others – cannot be described as an opposition party to the SNP. Their response to the Nationalists’ shield-banging has been to wheel out Gordon Brown and his proposals for yet more constitutional tinkering.
Labour doesn’t seem to have grasped the fact that, despite their constant complaints about Holyrood being “undermined”, the Nationalists have never wanted the devolution settlement to work.
It is only interested in using the devolution settlement as an opportunity to continue blaming Westminster for all failures, and to identify any successes as a further argument for independence.
Devolution did not “kill the SNP stone dead”, as George Robertson, the former Labour Scottish Secretary, claimed it would. The reason it didn’t isn’t a failing of the settlement, but because there is simply no concession, additional power, or funding that will satisfy the SNP.
It’s also that the party is enabled at Holyrood by the attitude of Scottish Labour. It’s not helped by the fact that Labour’s support in Scotland is itself divided, or at least equivocal, on independence.
But even on issues where it hopes to present itself as an opposition party – which in recent months has been almost exclusively on the SNP’s dismal handling of the wholly devolved NHS – its prescriptions and policies are virtually identical.
On others, including the GRR Bill, for which Labour is every bit as responsible as the Nationalists, they don’t even make any pretence.
It may be understandable that they should parrot the SNP’s kneejerk complaints about the wicked Westminster Tories for their own political advantage, but the result is that Labour has completely failed to hold the Scottish Government to account for its dismal record on health, education, policing, and almost every area of policy that the public cares about.
Keir Starmer actually seems to look to Nicola Sturgeon’s government for inspiration, and previously said that a UK Labour Government would introduce their own Hate Crime Act and GRR Bill.
On North Sea jobs, on prisoner voting, on rent controls, on the future of Scottish education, and on Covid laws – Labour backed the nationalist position. And at Westminster, Labour MPs abstained in the face of an SNP attempt to secure a second independence referendum.
The public in Scotland is beginning to ask “What is the point of Labour?” – and is a question as relevant to Scotland’s political future as the SNP’s dismal posturing is not.
It leaves the Scottish Conservatives as the only credible opposition to Nicola Sturgeon’s government. This particular shambles over highly contentious, ill-thought-out, and poorly examined legislation makes it obvious how necessary such opposition is.