Now we know why Nicola Sturgeon focused on non-binary and trans issues

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

Politics is among the poorest rewarded professions for those in senior leadership positions and few waste much time in cashing in while the public still remembers their name.
Fewer have done it with quite the unalloyed sense of purpose as Nicola Sturgeon, who has dominated the news schedules and front pages over recent days in a way that Kim Jong Un would be proud.
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For a self-confessed 'painfully shy' introvert, uncomfortable in the public spotlight, the former First Minister appears to have subdued her demons, at least temporarily, in the cause of promoting her new memoir, Frankly.
For anyone who has been in a coma this past week – well you haven't missed much. Selected passages published before the launch are, we have to assume, the most interesting bits, which hardly bodes well for the rest of the book.
It's not that Ms Sturgeon doesn't have anything useful to say, it's that she imparts it in such a lacklustre way, as though she has a nosebleed whenever she feels what she's writing might be too engaging.
The revelations, such as they are, will be familiar to anyone who follows Scottish politics closely.
Alex Salmond's claim that he was a victim of a criminal conspiracy that saw him charged – and cleared – of 13 counts of sexual assault, was preposterous. 'He impugned the integrity of the institutions at the heart of Scottish democracy.'
Ms Sturgeon suffered a panic attack during the 2014 independence referendum campaign due to media bias and because Salmond left her to do most of the heavy lifting. He flew to China without having read the white paper setting out the case for independence, she claims.
Being arrested – and later cleared – during Operation Branchform was the worst day of her life when she felt like she had 'fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel'.
While giving evidence to the Covid inquiry last year, she 'came perilously close to a breakdown' and later had to seek professional help.
What is missing is the contemporaneous, insider detail that makes reading political memoirs worthwhile – snatches of candid conversation with colleagues, disagreements, colourful observations that give the reader a sense that they're getting a privileged glimpse behind the scenes.
The problem with Ms Sturgeon's writing is that she remains, by her nature, a politician, which makes everything sound like a prepared statement.
In media interviews about her book, she has come across as cautious, obstructive even, as though she's still defending government policy rather than her own words, offered voluntarily. None more so than over the issue which has got the redtops in a tizzy – her sexuality.
Many of us had heard the rumours of supposed lesbian trysts with the former French ambassador to the UK, and the alleged purchase of a 'love nest' from Judy Murray to facilitate said trysts. All denied and laughed off by the parties themselves as well as by anyone who has more worthwhile things to think about.
Rather than leave it at that, Ms Sturgeon has chosen to address the issue of her sexuality head-on, albeit in a single sentence that she has since, stubbornly refused to elaborate on.
"Long-term relationships with men have accounted for more than thirty years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary,' she wrote. 'Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters."
We can probably all agree on the latter sentence, which begs the question, why include the former?
I would guess that there are vanishingly few people who give two hoots about who Ms Sturgeon goes to bed with, but there is a bigger and more profound issue at the heart of her admission.
It is that she appears perfectly content to discuss her sexual orientation when she has a book to sell, but not when she was First Minister, ushering in one of the most contentious and divisive programmes around sexual identity and sexual politics in the history of this country.
Did she not think that, if she is to make her own sexuality public property, it might have been more germane – to her colleagues and politicians from other parties, as well as to the voting public – to have known about it during the passage of the Gender Recognition Reform Act?
Does she not regard it at all significant that she now reveals her sexuality to be 'non-binary', given the centrality of the non-binary community to the purpose of her government's gender equality programme.
A working group on non-binary equality was established in 2019 and, two years later, it published a draft non-binary equality action plan that included 35 recommendations, 24 of which have since been accepted by the Scottish Government.
Among the recommendations was an assurance that 'non-binary people have equal access to transition-related healthcare, regardless of gender identity, gender presentation, race, disability, neurodiversity, financial resources, postcode, or other characteristics'.
The working group document stated: 'All trans and non-binary people should have equal access to treatment pathways. A large proportion of trans people identify as non-binary, but medical practitioners still often consider non-binary patients to be inherently more complex, meaning that they experience greater difficulties and delays in accessing treatment.'
Irrespective of what you think about the Scottish Government's gender recognition programme, we can all accept that it is a complex and highly charged policy area that should require full transparency from all of those involved.
The cases of Isla Bryson – a rapist who, after transitioning was remanded in a women's prison – and Sandie Peggie, a nurse who complained about sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor, demonstrate how the lived experience of people can quickly undermine the most well intentioned policy.
I'm not suggesting that every politician should be obliged to declare their sexuality before working or voting on sensitive sexual rights policies but I come back to the question around Ms Sturgeon: why now and not then?
Carlos Alba is a journalist, author, and PR consultant at Carlos Alba Media. His latest novel, There's a Problem with Dad, explores the issue of undiagnosed autism among older people