Nicola Sturgeon’s bungled gender crusade has undermined trans rights

The omnishambles playing out in Scottish politics makes one thing clear: Nicola Sturgeon has no clue what she is doing when it comes to trans rights. The First Minister’s flagship Gender Recognition Reform Bill has hit the buffers. Now an ‘urgent review’ has been launched on an issue that hardly requires much common sense: that trans women should not be housed in women’s prisons.

In its wisdom, the Scottish government has tried to build law and policy on magical thinking – that a man can become a woman just because he says so. Sturgeon didn’t listen to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, nor did she listen to Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls. But perhaps she should have taken note of something Ayn Rand once said: ‘We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.’

Sturgeon might continue to insist that transwomen are women, but it’s becoming clear that that there are limits – transwomen are most certainly not women when it is politically embarrassing for her SNP government.