New leader – new First Minister. Following the surprise resignation of Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP handed power to Humza Yousaf, who was health secretary in her cabinet. Can a Pakistani by origin be a Scottish nationalist? By all means – if we were to go by declarations. Humza Yousaf, aged 37 – born, raised and educated in Scotland – considers the emergence of an independent Scotland to be his main goal. And he claims he will make it happen.

The change of First Minister in itself is nothing particular and there would be no reason to bother the readers with such a change in Scotland – a small country that ceased to be a country over 300 years ago – had it not been for a particular aspect: never or nowhere did it come to pass that such a change resulted from a gender bill. The Scottish Executive, which has been an ardent advocate for progress in recent years and has introduced changes in every sphere without restraint – from gay marriages to lowering the voting age – may thus involuntarily become a warning to others. SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE

Nicola Sturgeon – who had been First Minister for over eight years, since the independence referendum of 2014, lost by the national camp – handed in her resignation but that was forced by the situation surrounding a bill that would radically facilitate sex change. A change on paper, without medical certificate and without the need to undergo surgery.

Perhaps the Scots would have swallowed it if it hadn’t been for the circumstances that must have made them aware of the traps occasioned by going that way. These include a conflict with the London government, which blocked the passage of the gender bill (while it depends on London it there another independence referendum is held in Scotland), and the increasingly severe problems SNP is facing, and a general sense that something is rotten in the state of Scotland, afflicted by the plague of drug abuse and alcoholism on a scale unknown anywhere in Europe.

These are difficult challenges, requiring a strong leader. Meanwhile Humza Yousaf enjoys full support of the party’s bigwigs and SNP members, but rather not of the whole society. A proud Scotsman

– I am a proud Scotsman – assured the new as intra-party election results were announced. He believes that an independent Scotland will come into being already during his generation’s lifetime. And he’s got his own plan, different form the one of Nicola Sturgeon, who wanted to combine the next parliamentary election with a referendum.

Humza Yousaf prefers to work at the grass roots so to reinforce the Scottish people in their belief that a divorce from England is a necessity while he wants to treat the election as a test of the SNP’s strength and position. Apart from that he intends to continue the work of his predecessor and it applies also to the sex change bill.

It doesn’t bode well. The starting point for blocking the new legislation by the Rishi Sunak government was that once it came into force, women living in Scotland would not have the same protections as women in other parts of the UK, and this violates the Equality Act. Nicola Sturgeon announced that she would appeal to the court, which should assess the legality of the bill. Her successor is also inclined to do so, provided that experts pronounce that the proposal has a chance of success.

Let us add, for the sake of clarity, that the questioned act does not have “sex change” in its name, but “adjustment”. Because sex understood as “gender” cannot be changed. In the modern understanding, gender is consciousness, it is known only to the person concerned and the only thing that can and should be done is to adapt its external attributes to the subjective sense of identity.

Meanwhile, life itself added a punchline here, which perhaps, apart from the bad situation in the SNP – unknown even to the member body, but certainly known to Nicola Sturgeon, since the work of the party was managed on an ongoing basis by her husband Peter Murrell – had an impact on the First Minister’s decision to step down.

The doubts of the government in London were not unfounded, because it turned out that a rigorous approach according to which if someone feels like a woman, then she is and should be treated as such, can lead astray. In Scotland, the radicalism of the regulations combined with political correctness made allegiance to LGBT ideology more important than anything else, including common sense. Such ideological manipulations can easily serve a bad cause. This is what the case of Isla Bryson illustrates.

Collection for a rapist

Until recently, no one had heard of her, except for the police and the prosecutor’s office. Here she is: a pretty, fair-haired woman, peeking coquettishly from under her long fringe fallimg over her eyes. This is what you see in a frequently published photo. Photos of Isla Bryson from a few years ago, however, show a bald man with a broad, grim face and tattoos on his forehead and cheeks. Back then, it was still Adam Graham.

It’s hard not to admire the craftsmanship of make-up and perhaps, to some extent, the effects of hormone therapy. For now, that’s all, because Adam Graham has not yet undergone an actual sex change operation. For now, he has been qualified for it, but under the NHS, the public health service, he must wait his turn. He’s waiting in prison, where he’s serving an eight-year sentence for two rapes – unless an online fundraiser gives him funds for a private procedure. And such a procedure will quickly pacify a dangerous criminal.

“A rapist who claims to be a trans woman is awaiting surgery. He can wait years. Let’s club together to have his penis and testicles cut off privately. I will pay £100 for it myself,” tweeted the well-known journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer, the initiator of the action.

Already after committing a series of rapes Adam Graham suddenly felt like a woman. If so, after the incarceration he must have been put in a women’s prison, otherwise his rights would have been infringed

And what about the rights of the women incarcerated there, who had every reason to fear his presence? Until the case become public nobody gave a damn, although it is hard to find a more accurate confirmation of the reservations expressed by the British government.

Female identity in such a situation acts as a screen. In the case of Adam Graham, it’s a ploy and pure fraud, judges his ex-wife Shonna. “When we were married, he never once mentioned that he was living in the wrong skin. He made it up to make it easier in prison” she told the Daily Mail.

For the gender bill and its proponents – especially the SNP and the Greens, coalition partners in the government – the story of Adam Graham aka Isla Bryson couldn’t have come at a worse time. Although the law has been passed by parliament, its possible disastrous consequences have not gone unnoticed by the public. Besides, there were also critical voices in the political world. For example, Alex Salmond, the long-time SNP leader, gave it a bad opinion, according to whom Nicola Sturgeon plays with moral novelties instead of focusing on the most important task: secession and regaining Scotland’s sovereignty.

Divisions are getting sharper

Although Humza Yousaf won the support of most SNP MPs in both the Scottish Parliament and the House of Commons, his success in the electoral struggle is not without shadows, in addition, such that may herald future problems. First, he won poorly with 52 percent of the vote against 48 percent for his main rival Kate Forbes. Secondly, it is already clear that mitigating the split caused by the party’s electoral campaign may not be an easy task. Besides, does the new First Minister really want to mitigate it?

Things were not as bad in the SNP as they were in the Conservative Party last summer when Boris Johnson’s successor was chosen, but even here the opponents did not spare each other. Humza Yousaf, as health minister, was an easy target for criticism because the NHS in Scotland, like the rest of the UK, is facing big problems.

Yousaf, in a conciliatory gesture, offered Kate Forbes a place in his government as minister of agriculture, but she did not accept the offer. No wonder, because an insignificant ministry for someone who occupied the most prominent position of finance minister is an open degradation. However, people were surprised that Yousaf started by reinforcing divisions instead of bridging them.

Thirdly, and what should worry the new First Minister most, Kate Forbes has lost among party members, but she is definitely in the lead among SNP supporters and among all Scots, with support in opinion polls at around 33%. This is a signal that can translate into election results. What does Kate Forbes owe it to? She was well-regarded as finance minister, and besides, it cannot be ruled out – although the polls did not ask about this – that she won the recognition of public opinion both for her views and faithfulness to principles.

Stubborn Conservative

From the very beginning of the campaign, 32-year-old Kate Forbes outraged some of her party colleagues and progressive fractions of public opinion. In interviews given at that time, she emphasized that she was against same-sex marriages, rejected abortion, did not accept pre-marital relationships, because she believed that it is best for children when they are born and brought up in marriage. She doesn’t condemn people who have chosen this path, she doesn’t seek to change the applicable regulations, but she doesn’t intend to change her views or hide them either. Of course, she is also opposed to the gender bill and would have voted against it if she had attended the parliamentary session (she did not because she was on maternity leave). Gender (sex), in her opinion, is determined by biology, there are no trans people, and Isla Bryson is a man.

Kate Forbes emphasizes that she is a believer. It belongs to the Free Church of Scotland, which, unlike many Protestant churches, shuns modernizing moral codes, and this fact alone seems dangerous to her opponents. They are warning that the conservative principles of her church could transfer into politics. Her views are incompatible with the world of progress.

Recognition in the eyes of the public, however, would indicate that many Scots may see it differently. The decline in support for the SNP, which is losing members at a dizzying pace, is also significant. The public had no idea about this until Kate Forbes and Ash Regan, the third candidate for the leadership position, demanded that the exact information be released.

It was a real cold shower: in December 2021, the SNP had 104,000 members, by December 2022 their number had shrunk to 82,000, by mid-February this year it was only 72,000. In just over a year, more than 30,000 people had left the SNP! Why? Since the SNP hasn’t changed its line on independence, perhaps it has exaggerated with PC and progress?

And these are not only moral issues, but also obtrusive dissociation from slavery, because the Scots in the colonies sometimes owned slaves, or attempts to honor witches from centuries ago as victims of male chauvinism.

The change of First Minister in Scotland will not change the fate of Europe and the world, unless the new government leads to the breakup of Great Britain. But perhaps it says something: about the limits to which one can go.

– Teresa Stylińska
– Translated by Dominik Szczęsny-Kostanecki

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists