‘Woke’ Sturgeon, Ardern exit stage left
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s wacky transgender wokery was not the only reason for her abrupt political downfall after almost nine years in power. There were others, too, that The Times concluded on Thursday contributed to her ill-starred story of “hubris, misjudgment and failure, from whose inevitable ending she could not escape”. But it was her mindless preoccupation with faddish radicalism that was the last straw and delivered a lesson that politicians across the world, including in Australia, would do well to heed.
Certainly, Ms Sturgeon was on the nose politically after losing a Supreme Court battle she had banked on to force through a fresh referendum on Scotland’s independence in defiance of the UK government at Westminster. Polls showed support for independence was in decline. So was backing for her and her Scottish National Party. But it was Ms Sturgeon who did herself in when she led her government into embarking on a disastrous set of reforms to transgender legislation that divided her party, alienated much of the Scottish electorate, and left her in the grotesque position of defending a rapist’s claim to womanhood and with it a place in a women’s prison. In what was a dopey bid to elevate perceptions of herself as a progressive, populist politician whose attributes would prove irresistible to the youth vote, she produced the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill that made it easier for transgender people to legally identify themselves – without so much as a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria – as being of a different gender. That meant people of 16 and older could change their gender simply by proclaiming they had done so. Sensibly, the UK government in London acted swiftly to annul Ms Sturgeon’s bill.
When New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern resigned last month saying she had “nothing left in the tank”, Ms Sturgeon moved quickly to emphasise that she had “plenty in the tank” and would lead Scotland to independence. Less than a month later, both leaders have gone and, for Scotland, the prospect of gaining independence is further away than ever with the Scottish National Party plunging in the polls. The perils of faddish radicalism for politicians everywhere are writ large in Ms Sturgeon’s fate. Donald Trump may have been exaggerating on Wednesday when he described Ms Sturgeon as a “crazed leftist (who) symbolises everything wrong with identity politics”. But he wasn’t far off the mark.
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