Robin Harper, the first Green parliamentarian elected in the UK, has resigned from the Scottish Greens, saying his former party has ‘lost the plot’. His resignation letter cites ‘serious concerns’ about the party’s handling of trans issues and hopes ‘the Scottish parliament will return to listening mode’ following the Cass and Sandyford reviews into gender identity services for children.
Robin Harper was and remains a man of the decent, outward-looking left, tolerant of disagreement, more interested in cooperating with his opponents than condemning them.
He urges ‘a complete overhaul’ of child and adolescent mental health services. Harper has previously called for the closure of the Sandyford, a Glasgow-based NHS clinic providing gender identity services to children and young people. Harper warned against ‘sending people straight down the line of the horrific idea of what amounts to self-harm on a gross scale’.
Under Harper’s successor Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Greens have become hardline proponents of transgender ideology and were the driving force behind Scotland’s gender bill, which lowers the age for changing gender to 16, reduces the wait period from two years to six months, and removes medical experts from the process.
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