Unpaid women’s groups offer more effective opposition to the SNP than Scottish Labour

With an election less than six months away, party leaders should be on the lookout for chances to wound a government that, on so many metrics – drug deaths, education, women’s rights – should be facing serious, robust opposition.

Yet, where is Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar on the latter issue? Hotly-tipped as the future First Minister not two years ago, he now continually ignores the opportunity to land blows he should be landing.

On no other issue are the SNP government’s inadequacies so exposed as their ongoing intransigence over gender self-ID. Despite the Supreme Court ruling this April confirming men identifying into women’s spaces is unlawful - which the government said they accepted - Swinney has nevertheless decided to spaff thousands more pounds of taxpayer’s money defending yet another legal challenge brought by For Women Scotland (FWS).

FWS are frustratedly returning to court to hold the government to account, this time over their failure to challenge the deplorable situation of male criminals who ‘identify as’ female being housed in women’s prisons.

Mr Swinney told journalists he would meet FWS in April after their SC win. To date, no invite has been extended.

FWS are three unpaid campaigners – Marion Calder, Susan Smith, Trina Budge – who’ve far preferable things to be doing, but have had their lives turned upside-down by this government. They’re also yet to be paid costs from the SC case.

In hindsight, it’s no surprise the SNP were reticent to include misogyny as an aggravator in their Hate Crime legislation, given contempt for women seems to be official Scottish Government policy.

Has Sarwar said anything adequate about this? No. Why not? It’s certainly not fear of public opinion. Polls routinely show majority support for the SC ruling.

Meanwhile, Angela Constance MSP, SNP justice secretary, twice claimed in Parliament last week she couldn’t answer questions about the government’s position on prisons as they related to “live court proceedings”.

Questioning came not from Sarwar but the Scottish Conservatives. Tess White MSP, Tory equalities spokesperson, sought clarity over the government’s wholly inconsistent position.

The Tories have long provided robust challenge to self-ID in Parliament, recognising early on how unpopular the SNP’s stance on self-ID is.

Smart politics, sure, though anyone listening to impassioned speeches by MSPs like Ms White cannot fairly accuse the Tories of mere cynical opportunism when defending women’s rights from SNP dismissiveness.

As Douglas Ross MSP pointed out, it’s simply untrue SNP ministers are constrained by court rules from answering questions on this issue. In claiming this, he believes Constance may have misled parliament. A solid accusation. One that could have been made by Sarwar, were he so motivated.

In return, Constance stated that despite critical “commentary” about the SNP’s decision not to answer questions on the FWS case, she didn’t take advice “from social media”.

Perhaps she should. On Twitter/X, Lucy Hunter Blackburn of policy outfit Murray Blackburn Mackenzie summed up the public mood, arguing the government is committing “thousands of pounds of public money to doing something Ministers are ashamed to discuss”.

On this maddening topic, unpaid women’s groups like FWS and MBM have always offered more effective opposition to the SNP than Scottish Labour. That’s disgraceful enough. It’s also embarrassing.

Does mortification at previously supporting the SNP’s 2022 Gender Recognition Reform Bill explain Sarwar’s timorousness at kicking the ball into this most open of goals? Fear of backlash from pro-self-ID Scottish Labour MSPs like Pam Duncan-Glancy and Monica Lennon? Surely not.

Keeping schtum won’t wash

Even the party’s previously enthusiastic self-ID advocates are quiet, hobbled by the SC ruling. Keeping schtum and hoping things move on appears to be Sarwar’s plan - much to growing grumbles within the party.

Sarwar should know this tactic won’t wash.

In a ham-fisted attempt at a U-turn earlier this year, he said if he’d known in 2022 what he knows now, he wouldn’t have whipped his party to vote for the GRR Bill. A daft, inelegant cop-out. If he’d listened to the hundreds of women who’d pointed out self-ID’s problems for years by that point, he’d have known all he needed to.

In fairness, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Jackie Baillie appears to have noted the way the wind is blowing. Ms Baillie publicly supported FWS at their September rally outside Holyrood, joining calls for the SC judgment to be implemented immediately. It’s a start. But not nearly enough to rebuild trust between Scottish Labour and women voters.

Swinney’s SNP is riven with division. It’s also facing significant financial problems. More reliant on volunteer activist campaigners, a great deal of them youthful types who falsely view FWS as the devil, Swinney has a quandary ahead of next year’s election.

Who to placate? Who to ignore? FWS? The public? His MSPs? His party activists?

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Whatever he decides, he loses in some way. Why Sarwar isn’t making hay with this is beyond me. In politics, if it’s difficult to do the right thing - admitting past faults, promising to do better - for moral reasons, then doing so for reasons of political expediency is advisable.

Swinney is choosing to defend an unconscionable stance that says male trans-identifying criminals should have more rights than often vulnerable, traumatised women in Scotland’s jails. That’s objectively obscene.

It might fly with some SNP MSPs and party activists. But it shouldn’t get a pass from Scottish Labour. If he truly covets the First Ministership, Anas Sarwar has to show stronger, smarter leadership.