GRAHAM GRANT: Swinney still can't say what a 'woman' is but voters know a 'leader' when they see one and he doesn't fit the bill

Daily Mail​

21-04-2025

John Swinney has defied the well-established political dictum that when you're in a hole, you should stop digging.
After last week's landmark Supreme Court gender judgment, he's still in that hole, shovel in hand – busily turning it into a chasm.
Far from providing a degree of clarity for the First Minister, that seismic ruling seems to have muddied the waters.
Asked twice at the weekend whether he accepted 'a trans woman is not a woman', Mr Swinney would not explicitly say so - and instead repeatedly said that he accepted the court's ruling.
It said the definition of 'woman' in UK equality law was based on 'biological sex', not preference or having a gender recognition certificate (GRC).
SNP ministers had argued the term 'women' should include biological males who have legally changed gender - which the Supreme Court said would create 'incoherence' in practice.
The ruling means that men who change gender and have a GRC are not legally women and that women-only spaces such as toilets, changing rooms and rape crisis centres can exclude trans women if it is 'proportionate'.
Adding insult to injury, Mr Swinney refused to apologise to those brave women who stood up to his government's transgender stance, and he even appeared to open the door to a revival of Nicola Sturgeon's abortive 'self-ID' legislation.
It would have allowed 16-year-olds to secure a GRC – down from the current minimum age of 18 – but was blocked by the UK Government and later dropped by the SNP – or so we thought.
Mr Swinney is doubling down when he should be rowing back because he can't bring himself to concede that for years his government backed an agenda whose fundamental pillars were built on sand - and now face being swept away.
Radical trans policies have been hard-wired into the public sector and will now have to be unpicked, doubtless over a long period of time and at great cost to the taxpayer – adding to the £1million the SNP has already wasted on defending its position in court.
As an unrepentant cheerleader of the transgender lunacy which we now know was founded on a false proposition, Mr Swinney should be pleading for our forgiveness.
Instead we're told that a statement at Holyrood on Tuesday by Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville will set out the government's response to the Supreme Court judgment.
Anyone expecting clarity would be well-advised not to hold their breath, given that Mr Swinney has set the tone for what she's likely to say.
The chances are that it won't be an admission of error, an apology, or an announcement of a determination to change direction.
Mr Swinney and his ministers are content to pay lip service to respecting the court's opinion but that's as far as it goes – otherwise, it seems, it's business as usual for the SNP.
That shouldn't surprise us, as the party hasn't always seen eye to eye with the justices of the UK's highest court.
Kenny MacAskill, as Justice Secretary, criticised Supreme Court judges for their ignorance about Scotland, claiming their knowledge of it was limited to their trips to the Edinburgh Festival.
He did pay a high price for that intervention – the late Lord McCluskey, writing in the Mail, launched a broadside against Mr MacAskill over this slight and a series of other issues and he was later sacked by Nicola Sturgeon.
She has also kept a low profile since the Supreme Court bombshell, though her ex-chief of staff Liz Lloyd said she didn't 'think either side of this debate could really walk around with a halo over their head saying, you know, we got this absolutely right'.
You might think that's a significant concession from the Sturgeon camp, but this goes far beyond halo slippage.
Ms Sturgeon and her colleagues demonised critics of their doomed self-ID law and ploughed ahead with some of the most divisive legislation MSPs had ever considered.
The resulting row was a contributory factor to Ms Sturgeon's downfall, and it robbed her of a longed-for legacy.
Trans rights became the defining theme of her administration, and the failure of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill meant she had little to show from her eight years in office - bar baby boxes.
Mr Swinney's evasion and bluster are driven by the same instinct for political damage limitation – but it's too late for that.
The scale of this defeat is so great that in any sane universe, heads would roll – including Mr Swinney's.
Meanwhile, like Ms Sturgeon, Sir Keir Starmer has maintained a monastic silence on the ruling, and the Mail on Sunday revealed that some of his frontbenchers are plotting to defy it.
In WhatsApp messages sent on Thursday evening, culture minister Sir Chris Bryant joined an attack on Baroness Falkner, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which must draw up guidance for organisations to follow when enforcing the ruling.
Earlier that day, Baroness Falkner had said that the ruling clearly meant that trans women could not use single-sex female facilities or compete in women's sports.
After Labour MP Steve Race said Lady Falkner's words were 'pretty appalling', Mr Bryant replied: 'Agreeed [sic].'
Another MP on the WhatsApp group wrote it was 'sad to see some institutions choose to ignore the Supreme Court's very strong line that trans people are protected by the Equality Act too'.
Home Office minister Dame Angela Eagle replied: 'They won't be feeling that way now and we need to remember that and organise.'
It's yet another display of brazen contempt and it's all the more sickening when you consider that the campaigners who took the SNP government to court have been subjected to an outpouring of hate since the judgment was handed down last Wednesday.
Messages sent to For Women Scotland's email address included one hours after the ruling which said: 'You're a group of disgusting murderers and deserve death. God will rip you from your family one day and nobody will mourn you.'
Another read: 'Your inhumanity makes me vomit.
'You stupid women should feel deeply ashamed for being so stupid.'
Wearied campaigners say they haven't reported this barrage of abuse to police, while officers have defended the right to protest while condemning threats as 'senseless and unacceptable'.
The same description could be applied to the SNP's failure to accept that it's game over for the trans radicalism which became its raison d'être - once it was clear that its crusade for independence was in the deep freeze.
If shameless Mr Swinney wants to keep pursuing this madness, Scots will pass judgment on his actions and those of his ministers at the ballot box next year.
Mr Swinney may struggle to define a 'woman' but voters, male and female, will have no such trouble defining a 'leader' - and it's clear that he falls woefully short of the necessary criteria.