Scotland Picks a Losing Fight with the U.K.

By Madeleine Kearns

Sunday, January 22, 2023

 

In early December, Scottish police at Glasgow airport identified a “suspicious package.” Flights were canceled. Hundreds of travelers, staff, and crew were ushered into the car park where they were kept for six hours, huddled together in foil blankets. Police Scotland later announced that the item had been “innocent in nature.” The steps they had taken were “a precautionary measure,” taken “in accordance with procedures.”

 

No further details were given. No explanation as to what risks were assessed or whether the “procedures” applied had been appropriate or proportionate. No apology for — or even acknowledgment of — the tremendous inconvenience caused. The incident served to exemplify the governing style of the Scottish government: We know best, so shut up and get in line. Of course, such an approach is enabled by the compliance of its citizens. As some predicted, the pandemic-era assaults on civil liberties have only served to worsen this trend.

 

In part for structural reasons, and because it lacks separation of powers, the Scottish government is insufficiently transparent. The current Scottish National Party–led government has been in power for most of the Scottish parliament’s existence. Recent examples of its lack of transparency include the ferries scandal, the revelation that the Scottish government had failed to record its bungled multimillion-pound takeover of the Ferguson shipyard, and the first minister’s misleading of a parliamentary committee set up to investigate her government’s handling of sexual-misconduct complaints against her predecessor, Alex Salmond.

 

The Scottish press (being under-resourced) is maddeningly incurious towards such matters. When scandals do occur, they are rarely given journalistic scrutiny and scarcely inspire lively debate. Neither is the Scottish parliament held accountable by the electorate. Consider the alarming decline of Scotland’s major services. Its record on education is abysmal. Its drug-death problem is by far the worst in Europe. More money is spent per capita on Scottish services than anywhere in England, so the problem is hardly underfunding. In a healthy democracy, these are some of the issues you would expect to be debated by politicians, and upon which opposition parties would pounce. But Scottish politics is a monolith, and, because of that, the opposition parties’ best players pursue their careers in Westminster.

 

This is my rather long-winded attempt to dispel the romantic notions Americans sometimes have about how Scottish independence would somehow make Scotland freer and more prosperous. Just look at who’s running the place!

 

The Scottish government’s latest bright idea has been to introduce a law that scraps the medical requirement of a gender-dysphoria diagnosis for changing one’s legal gender, lowers the minimum age of doing so to 16, and shortens the waiting period to three months.

 

While advancing a progressive social agenda, the new law has predictably provoked constitutional tensions with the U.K. government — which exercised, for the first time since devolution in 1999, its right to veto. The U.K. government blocked the Scottish gender reforms on the grounds that they conflict with preexisting U.K.-wide anti-discrimination legislation.

 

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is still sore from the U.K. supreme court’s ruling in November that the Scottish government did not have the legal authority to hold its own referendum on whether Scotland could leave the United Kingdom. Should she challenge this U.K. government intervention too, she would likely lose on the same grounds. This, she knows. Her strategy is to achieve a rhetorical victory, not a legal one.

 

Writing on Twitter, the first minister said: “This is a full-frontal attack on our democratically elected Scottish Parliament and it’s [sic] ability to make it’s [sic] own decisions on devolved matters.” However, because of its conflict with U.K.-wide sex-based protections, the bill cannot be properly considered a devolved matter. As Noel Yaxley at City Journal explains: 

 

Senior government figures in Westminster fear the new bill could lead to “trans tourism,” whereby a transgender woman could travel to Scotland, legally change gender, and then use this newly acquired official status to access female-only spaces, such as changing rooms, toilets, and hospital wards throughout England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

 

Rishi Sunak rightly decided to put women’s interests — both in Scotland and elsewhere in the U.K. — ahead of diplomatic relations north of the border.

 

Sturgeon may have enough votes in the Scottish parliament to push through her preferred legislation, but she does not have the popular support of the Scottish people. The U.K. government isn’t intervening to withdraw resources from Scottish children (as “Margaret Thatcher, the milk snatcher” had ostensibly done), but to ensure that the rights of women provided by the U.K. parliament are not taken away. Two-thirds of Scots oppose Sturgeon’s bill; so does the vigorously nationalist Wings Over Scotland blog. Sturgeon’s uncompromising pursuit of sex self-ID brought about the biggest rebellion her party has ever seen, including the first resignation of a cabinet minister since devolution.

 

Even if the matter does make its way to the U.K. supreme court, Sturgeon cannot expect to win. But then, perhaps the current set-up suits Sturgeon and her allies well. They have just enough power to feel important and just too little to be held accountable by the people they govern.