Why is Nicola Sturgeon acting like a poundland Trump?

They’re innocuous little freebies which allow participants to feel important for a while and can often be used as currency to obtain a first-class ticket on Scotland’s long and serpentine civic gravy train. Not long after this particular junket, which included several influential figures within the SNP, Donald Trump embarked on his four-year-long, White House Monster’s Ball.

In the years that have since elapsed you wonder how closely Nicola Sturgeon and her administration have been studying the former US president and his favoured strategies. With each passing year the Scottish Government and the First Minister have increasingly morphed into a Poundland version of the Trump presidency.

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This reached its apotheosis on Friday when Ms Sturgeon delivered an astonishing diatribe aimed at critics of her chaotic gender reforms. Opponents of this legislation have expressed reasonable concerns about how it will affect women’s sex-based rights. These were immediately borne out by the case of Isla Bryson, a transgender double rapist. As Adam Bryson, this fully intact adult male undertook a campaign of sexual violence against women, fathered two children, became engaged to one woman and married another.

In 2020, while awaiting trial for two rapes he decided he wanted to become a woman and was remanded at Cornton Vale women’s prison after being found guilty. His case epitomised the fears that many women had expressed about the gender reform legislation, only to be ignored and accused of transphobia. It was also a personal humiliation for the First Minister who, lacking any meaningful achievement in her eight-year tenure, chose to make this the defining issue of her premiership.

You don’t have to pose as a feminist to harbour fears about this policy; you only have to recognise that vulnerable women would be put at risk by the self-ID aspect of gender reform.

Yet, rather than issue an apology for her dangerous arrogance and order an urgent review of her crumbling legislation, Ms Sturgeon chose to defame the overwhelming majority of Scots who harbour fears about the safeguarding of women’s spaces. She said: “There are people who have opposed this bill that cloak themselves in women's rights to make it acceptable, but just as they're transphobic you'll also find that they're deeply misogynist, often homophobic, possibly some of them racist as well.”

Donald Trump would have been proud of her. It bore all the hallmarks of his evidence-free and increasingly crazed tirades against those who dared to oppose him. By the end of his presidency, Trump’s inner circle had contracted to include only those who had agreed never to tell him anything he didn’t want to hear. I fear that Ms Sturgeon has now tumbled head-long into that bleak rabbit-hole.

One of Mr Trump’s wildest obsessions was the wall he sought to build to keep the Mexicans out. Scotland’s First Minister now seems intent on building a wall between her and the people who trust her to act in their best interests. Mr Trump’s public addresses gradually descended into paranoid and foam-flecked haranguing of groups and individuals who had the courage to call him out. Sadly, Ms Sturgeon seems to be dipping further into his play-book.

Only someone surrounded by the most supine lickspittles could have believed that such sentiments were worthy of a mature politician, let alone a leader. It’s since transpired that a number of other individuals with records of extreme violence against women are being sent to live among female prisoners.

Some immediate questions require to be answered about the Bryson case. Did the transfer to Cornton Vale come about as a consequence of direct ministerial intervention? And if so, who will be made to take the fall? To what extent was Ms Sturgeon herself orchestrating this?

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Cornton Vale houses some of Scotland’s most at-risk women, the majority of whom are serving time for relatively minor offences. The lives of many have been damaged as a direct or indirect consequence of male violence. A disproportionately large number of them come from communities menaced by social inequality and multi-deprivation.

Those few politicians and women’s groups who pointed out the gross negligence, bordering on criminal, of setting violent male sex offenders loose among them, were howled down and accused of transphobia. And often by middle-class, gentrified radicals – from all parties – who have made lots of money by pretending to stand up for disadvantaged communities. In truth, they despise those who live in these places.

In 16 years of unbroken power the SNP have done nothing to intervene on their behalf. The First Minister’s plans to close the educational attainment gap have been ditched and endless promises to address bed-blocking and to organise a competent system of social care has brought the NHS in Scotland to its knees.

Scotland’s annual toll of drugs deaths is an obscenity and a direct result of gross governmental negligence. In all of these sectors it’s the poorest people who bear the brunt of this serial incompetence. The disregard of Scotland’s political elites for the safety of vulnerable women prisoners reflects their generational failure to improve the lives in our neediest communities. In this, at least, there is a consistency to their approach.

Since 2015, when the MSP Joan McAlpine first raised concerns about how gender ideology would be used to mask violence against women, a sinister drumbeat has accompanied civic discourse in Scotland. I’ve lost count of the people (mainly women) occupying senior positions in Scottish public life and in the third sector who have expressed genuine fear about speaking out on this new fascism. Their livelihoods and, occasionally, their physical safety and mental health are at risk if they dare to raise concerns.

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When Nicola Sturgeon last intervened to gaslight her fellow Scot, the SNP MP Joanna Cherry was threatened with sexual violence. Following Friday’s incontinent outburst a few more women in her own party will be forced to take extra care as they go about their business. They all know that the professional SNP is pitiless and utterly devoid of mercy if you refuse to bend the knee.

It’s falsely assumed that this is being orchestrated by groups belonging to the hard-left. They’re all about as radical as Jeremy Clarkson, though. And they have no interest in the lives of those who are most in need of help.