Nicola Sturgeon will be haunted by this legacy - and she has no one to blame but herself

It was the summer of 2021, just after she was re-elected First Minister and was hell bent on pushing through self-ID: the process whereby anyone over 16 can change their legal sex by filling in a form. I used this column to pen an open letter to her where I begged her to reconsider her stance on gender identity. Like many other women, I wanted “trans folk to be treated with dignity”, but I couldn’t swallow a “queer, postmodernist theory that overturns 1.2 billion years of evolution”. I urged her to read Helen Joyce’s book, Trans, which had just been published. “It may well offer you a new perspective on this most troubling of national conversations,” I said. I doubt she even saw the column. She definitely took no heed of the women’s rights campaign that was building across Scotland in opposition to her plans.

Over the next few years, she pressed ahead with gender recognition reform, even managing to pass a bill in Holyrood in December 2022, only for it to be struck down a few weeks later by the then-Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack, for clashing with the UK-wide Equality Act. Then came Adam Graham/Isla Bryson. A double rapist sashaying across the front pages in revealing pink leggings and a cheap blonde wig. Graham’s astonishing appearance said more about the risks of self-ID than any number of newspaper columns or meticulously researched books. A few weeks later, on February 15, 2023, Nicola Sturgeon resigned as First Minister. And I stopped thinking about her. More or less.

Until this week, when up she popped giving an exit interview to BBC Scotland’s political editor, Glenn Campbell. She prickled when he asked her about the controversy around the gender reforms. “There was nothing I could have done to change the tone of that debate,” she snapped. Oh Nicola, that is simply not true. There was so much you, as the First Minister, and a self-identified feminist, could have done to change the tone of the national conversation. But for reasons known only to yourself, you refused.

You refused to engage with your senior SNP colleagues who raised concerns about the planned legislation. Did you speak to your fellow MSP, Joan McAlpine, in May 2019 when she expressed disquiet about the impact of self-ID on the census? I don’t think so. And why did you not stand up for your sister SNP politician, Joanna Cherry, when she was bombarded with death threats for her views on women’s rights?

In June 2020, when author and philanthropist J.K. Rowling wrote her now-famous essay on sex and gender, why didn’t your office pick up the phone and ask to meet with her? I have worked on a First Minister’s team. I know how it works. Why didn’t you want to hear directly what one of Scotland’s most influential people had to say on the issue?

And later that year, why did you ignore Johann Lamont’s powerful intervention in the final stages of the Forensic Medical Services Bill? The former Labour leader’s argument that “Sex is defined in law; gender is not. A right is not a right if it is unenforceable” won the day, gaining support from the then-Health Secretary and your dear friend, Jeane Freeman. Did that not make you think twice? When For Women Scotland – three ordinary women – risked their family’s financial future by taking your government to court, did you not wonder what was driving them, and the thousands of women who supported their cause?

Again, when Ash Regan stood down as Community Safety minister in October 2022 because she could not support the gender reform bill – the first time an SNP minister had resigned on a point of principle - did you not start to question the wisdom of pushing through such a controversial law?

And as the women’s rights movement gathered pace, did it never cross your mind to speak to them? Why were you not interested in hearing from mothers whose daughters wanted to bind their breasts because they believed they were boys? Why did you not feel the need to listen to survivors of sexual violence who required the sanctuary of single-sex spaces to heal? Or the women in prisons forced to live alongside male inmates? And why did you say the views of women who disagreed with you were “not valid”? Our votes are valid. Why not our views?

There was a time, Nicola, when you were all-powerful. When Scotland danced to your tune. You had every lever, and countless opportunities, to change the tone of the debate around self-ID and gender identity. But you chose not to. You decided instead to go to war with women.

Only you know why you chose to be so confrontational, but as you contemplate life outside the political bubble, you can be sure of one thing. Adam Graham, or Isla Bryson as you prefer to call him, will haunt you for the rest of your life. You will be remembered, not for the baby box; nor your as yet unfulfilled promise to young people in care; not even for the endless debate on independence – but for the image of a violent sexual abuser masquerading as a woman. A double rapist in pink leggings is your legacy, Nicola. And you have no-one to blame but yourself.