Nicola Sturgeon expected a “Stalinist adherence to the leadership line” on gender issues, one of the party’s most senior MPs has said.

Joanna Cherry said many activists and members were “very unhappy” about the former first minister’s position but were “afraid to say so.”

The comments were made in The National and in a new book of essays by gender critical women.

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In The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, published on Thursday, Ms Cherry recounts her sacking from the SNP front bench in 2021.

At the time, the then Westminster leader of the group, Ian Blackford, said she had been demoted because of her “unacceptable behaviour.”

He never explained what this meant, but his decision came a week after members of Out for Independence, the official LGBT wing of the SNP, criticised Ms Cherry for defending a gender critical activist on social media.

Ms Cherry was also a prominent critic of the Scottish Government’s ultimately doomed plan to reform gender recognition laws.

In the National, the MP said “gender identity” ideology - that anyone should be able to self-identify as whatever gender they wish and have that legally recognised - has “taken root in public institutions not just in Scotland but across the United Kingdom including our police, our prosecution service, our courts, our prisons, our schools, colleges and universities, our political parties, and our Parliament.”

She said women had been called “hateful” for questioning this.

“Accusations of transphobia have been used to silence perfectly reasonable concerns, women have been removed from social media platforms, had websites and social media forums shut down, been bullied, and harassed at work, lost jobs and even been arrested, questioned and prosecuted for speech that was perfectly lawful.”

Ms Cherry said she was “demonised, ostracised, bullied, and harassed for speaking up for the rights of women.”

She wrote: “People sometimes ask me why I have stayed in the SNP despite this treatment. The answer is quite simple. Firstly, one should never give in to bullies. Secondly, the SNP was founded by intellectuals, artists, poets and thinkers.

“The lack of debate and the Stalinist adherence to the leadership line which was expected in the Sturgeon years would have been anathema to them.

“Thirdly, I knew that this ideology had been adopted without any proper debate or discussion in the party and that many activists and members were very unhappy about it, although they were afraid to say so.”

MSPs backed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill in December 2022 by 86 votes to 39 on a cross-party basis.

The legislation was supposed to speed up and simplify the process for a trans person to obtain a gender recognition certificate and change their legal sex.

Under the current system, this takes at least two years, involves a medical diagnosis and is only available at 18.

Holyrood’s Bill would have cut the waiting time to six months, lowered the age threshold to 16, and, crucially, scrapped the need for medical diagnosis, known as self-ID.

Before the prospective law could be given Royal Assent, Scottish Secretary Alister Jack blocked it by using powers granted to him under Section 35 of the 1998 Scotland Act.

It was the first time in the history of devolution that the power had been used. 

He argued that although the subject matter was within Holyrood’s powers, the Bill would harm the operation of UK-wide equality law.

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In the book, Ms Cherry says the Gender Recognition Reform Bill “is a microcosm of everything that was wrong with the SNP under its previous leadership.”

She added: “A controversial, ill-thought-through policy that was never debated on the floor of conference, a refusal to listen to those with legitimate concerns, the demonisation of dissenters and, above all, as the opinion polls show, a failure to take the public with us.

“Humza Yousaf is to be commended for doing the right thing by not pursuing an appeal that could never be won.

“Lessons must be learned, not just by my party, but by all the political parties in Scotland who preferred shallow virtue-signalling to evidence-based policy-making.”

The SNP has been approached for comment.