Nicola Sturgeon’s crocodile tears won't help the ‘brave’ women she betrayed

Paradoxically, many are also thin-skinned and struggle to accept even the mildest criticism. But the majority are not hypocrites, and those who are rarely survive. As voters, we may forgive serial adulterers, clumsy orators, poor policy-makers, but we have a palpable aversion to hypocrites.

So perhaps it is just as well that Sturgeon’s political career ends in a few months’ time, because her recent utterings have shown her to be a phoney of the highest order.

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Sturgeon trying to rewrite history

The apogee of her duplicity came on Tuesday night in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall during an interview with The Scotsman’s education correspondent, Cat Stewart. The former First Minister, who is at the fag end of her UK tour to promote her memoir Frankly, described women such as nurse Sandie Peggie and engineer Maria Kelly, who are currently suing their employers for discrimination on the basis of their sex, as “brave”.

Apparently with a straight face, she said: “I think any woman or any person who feels that their human rights have been compromised and come forward to challenge that, whether they are ultimately found to be vindicated or not... [it] is a brave thing to do, and particularly when that involves sharing intimate details.”

In a masterclass of hypocrisy, shot through with cruelty, Sturgeon tried to rewrite history. For the record, without fear of contradiction, here are the facts.

Peggie is suing NHS Fife for discrimination after she was forced to share a changing room with a biologically male doctor who identifies as a woman. Kelly’s case against her employer, aerospace firm Leonardo, is based on the company’s policy of mixed-sex toilets.

Both organisations implemented the self-ID policies promoted by Sturgeon. As First Minister and the chief cheerleader for gender reform, she created the political and cultural environment where women’s sex-based rights were trashed in favour of men who claimed to be female.

‘The bare-faced audacity’

There is no doubt that both women are brave. They risked their livelihoods and put themselves in the public spotlight on a point of principle, something very few of us would have the courage to do. But they were forced into public view by the very woman who now calls them brave. As Olympic medallist Sharron Davies wrote on social media earlier this week, “I cannot believe the bared-faced audacity of this woman!”

If Sturgeon had, in good faith, simply got a policy disastrously wrong, as most governments do at some point, then her praise for Peggie and Kelly could be seen as a thoughtful intervention by a mature politician reassessing her legacy.

But this is no ordinary politician. This is Sturgeon, who in September 2021 coldly dismissed the views of women – much like Peggie and Kelly – as irrelevant. Speaking in parliament, she said: “Gender recognition reform is about changing an existing process to make it less degrading, intrusive and traumatic for one of the most stigmatised minorities in our society. We should focus on the real threats to women, not the threats that, while I appreciate that some of these views are very sincerely held, in my view, are not valid.”

The expression of Sturgeon’s face

This is the same Sturgeon, who during the passage of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill in December 2022, sat for three days with her back to the women in the public gallery, only turning to face them when Elaine Miller made her infamous merkin protest as the bill was passed.

Recalling that moment in the book The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, Miller wrote: “I will never forget the expression on Nicola Sturgeon’s face, when at long last, she turned her head and looked at the public gallery.”

Three months later, both the gender bill and Sturgeon were consigned to history. The UK Government vetoed the bill as it cut across the 2010 Equality Act and Sturgeon resigned as First Minister. In the years since, she has dedicated her time to writing the memoir that she is now so feverishly promoting.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of For Women Scotland that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, sex is based on biology and not identity, and Peggie and Kelly embarked on gruelling employment tribunals to secure their rights as women.

During the Usher Hall interview, in reference to people who identify as transgender, Sturgeon said she did not go into politics to “chuck vulnerable groups under the bus”. Yet she was happy to betray women’s rights for plaudits from so-called progressives.

Political failure

The sooner the marketing campaign for her book is over, the better for all of us. There is a mountain of work to be done to restore women’s sex-based rights, from ensuring that women in prison are protected to the full provision of single-sex toilets in schools and workplaces.

There is an even bigger challenge for politicians to rebuild confidence in the democratic process, so badly damaged by the leadership style of Sturgeon that brooked no dissent, whether within her party or among the public.

Her words still have the power to attract headlines, but in truth the former First Minister has nothing left to offer Scotland or the SNP. Her self-justifying, hypocritical interventions are increasingly seen for what they are – a politician coming to terms with failure. But fear not, a new career may well be opening up for her, as she clearly has a talent for fiction.