Humza Yousaf should have listened to women like Ash Regan about gender self-ID. Now he may have to – Susan Dalgety

The Scottish Greens may try to pretend that they were sacked from government because of their anger at Yousaf ditching climate change targets, but their co-leader Lorna Slater gave it away when she urged SNP members who “do care about trans rights” to join the Scottish Greens. In the bizarre world of Holyrood, it seems that saving the planet comes second to indulging men who want to become women.

Women tried to tell Yousaf that his support for self-ID and, until very recently, puberty blockers for children, went against the grain of public opinion – and science – just as they tried, unsuccessfully, to get his predecessor and mentor Nicola Sturgeon to listen to their concerns. But both turned their back on Scottish women a few years ago, preferring instead to indulge in so-called ‘progressive’ identity politics.

Conscience over career

Taking selfies festooned in rainbow lanyards replaced the hard work of developing policies that worked in real life. But in the end, their obsession with transgender ideology proved to be their undoing. Sturgeon hides away, writing her “deeply personal” memoirs, while Yousaf is bunkered in Bute House, desperately trying to hang on to power.

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The irony is that his fate now lies with one of the leading women in the grassroots movement that grew up in response to Sturgeon’s obsession with trans issues. Ash Regan, the MSP for Edinburgh East, resigned her position as minister for community safety in Sturgeon’s government in October 2022. She could not vote for Sturgeon’s gender recognition reform bill, so chose conscience over career – a rare move in Holyrood, where mediocre politicians cling on to their ministerial cars for dear life. Principles are nothing compared to luxuries like a private office and a government chauffeur.

When Regan left the SNP and joined the Alba party, Yousaf, ever the gentleman, said her defection was “no great loss". Today, as she holds the single vote that could save his un-glittering career and that of his ministers, he must be regretting his intemperate language.

However, Regan is not looking for an apology. She made the price for her support clear in her letter to him yesterday. As well as independence – not surprising from an Alba member – she put protecting the dignity of women and children and competent government as her priorities.

Lessons for Labour

But while opposition parties delight in the latest episode of the SNP’s long-running psychodrama, they would do well to heed the lessons of the last ten years, particularly Scottish Labour. It’s not just the nationalists who were seduced by trans ideology. Labour was too, voting for Sturgeon’s gender reform legislation even after their own amendments were defeated.

Its leadership ignored experienced voices like former MSPs Elaine Smith, Jenny Marra and Johann Lamont who warned the party was in danger of abandoning women, dismissing them as out-of-touch with the modern world. Labour supported the flawed hate crime law that has swamped Police Scotland in recent weeks, and looks set to back the misogyny bill which puts trans-identified men on an equal footing with women, as well as the SNP’s conversion therapy proposals which could see parents break the law because they want to protect their children from trans ideology.

Meanwhile, a quarter of primary school children are persistently absent from class, NHS waiting lists have spiralled out of control, Edinburgh and Glasgow have both declared housing emergencies and the economy is, at best, sluggish. Anas Sarwar and his right-hand woman Dame Jackie Baillie could do worse than take advice from Alex Salmond’s former chief of staff. In an impassioned plea on the Holyrood Sources podcast earlier this week, Geoff Aberdein urged Yousaf to “Get rid of the pish legislation that you’ve got upcoming that means very little to the vast majority of the public. Focus on issues that carry favour. Focus on job creation, focus on health, focus on education, forget the rest of it…”

Rowling on Karma

Aberdein’s blunt advice might have been directed at Yousaf, but it works equally as well for Sarwar, who may well be First Minister one day. The Scottish people – on both sides of the constitutional divide – have had enough of leaders who offer nothing but vainglorious press releases and empty messaging. They want a government that delivers practical change – whether on climate change or in our classrooms and A&E wards.

They don’t want politicians who mistake campaigning for governing. They want government ministers to roll up their sleeves and do some hard work for a change, and they want their MSPs to hold the Scottish Government to account, instead of using of Holyrood as nothing more than a backdrop for their social media accounts. The people really do want their political leaders to “get rid of the pish”.

Meanwhile, in Bute House a young man contemplates the ignominious end of his political career, one which started with so much promise but looks set to end in abject failure. On Thursday, another leading women’s rights campaigner, author JK Rowling, tweeted a tarot card bearing the phrase, “they say Karma’s a bitch, but I hear she’s a Terf”. She said the picture came to her when she considered “the idea that Humza Yousaf’s political fate may now lie in the hands of Ash Regan, the woman who left the SNP in disgust at its plans for gender self-ID”. How different things might have been for Yousaf if only he had listened to the women.