18 July 2025

John Swinney is lost in trans confusion

Scottish voters have made up their mind, but the SNP still can’t hear them.

As a summary of where we are right now, it’s hard to best “persistent knobheadery”. Such was the pithy explanation offered by a Number 10 insider this week for the suspension of four Labour MPs, who it was said had persistently and unforgivably caused the government – current majority 148 – problems.

But glass houses, and all that. A sizeable chunk of the electorate would fire the phrase straight back at Keir Starmer and his chums. After stumbling, u-turning, and mismanaging its way through its first year in power, his administration is arguably in no position to call anyone else a knobhead, persistent or otherwise.

There is always glee for the columnist – and the radio host, the TV presenter – when a politician uses profanity. It licenses us to repeat it, and there’s not much puritanical editors can do about it. So, persistent knobheadery. Excellent.

Have there ever been so many knobheads in politics and in public life? Probably, but this does feel like one of those vintage eras. Looking across the frontbenches and the backbenches, at the state of the national debate and the condition of the country, it’s hard to find much to like, or many individuals to warm to. Nor does the electorate see anything to distinguish the ruling class. Polling suggests the prevailing public opinion is that all politicians are the same – a plague on all their houses.

Such is the scale of disillusionment that only Nigel Farage is polling well. Ironic, given that he may be considered the biggest knobhead of them all. What saves him, of course, is the absence of any governing track record, which has left him free to promise the earth and the moon. His programme would explode on first contact with real power, as we may yet have the misfortune to find out.

It’s not just politicians. The behaviour of the state and its bureaucracies towards those they ostensibly exist to serve is overweening, blunt, often punitive, and sometimes even deadly. Think of the Post Office scandal, the merciless running under the wheels of innocents, the long-running failure of the centre to grasp the issue; or of the various Covid-related scandals; or of sewage-filled rivers, or of the NHS perma-crisis.

And then look north, where the Sandie Peggie case is currently playing out. Peggie is a nurse who refused to share a changing room with a transgender doctor at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy. In 2023, the doctor, Beth Upton, claimed to have been the victim of a “hate incident” after being confronted by Peggie. The nurse was suspended and threatened with the sack, and an investigation was launched.

Peggie has taken her employers, NHS Fife, and Upton to an industrial tribunal, claiming discrimination and harassment. This week, shortly before the tribunal was due to resume, it was announced that the internal investigation had cleared her of Upton’s allegations. This would seem to disarm the health board’s opposition to her tribunal; and yet the organisation is ploughing blindly on. The cost to the taxpayer is already estimated to be more than £220,000.

The evidence that emerged at the tribunal this week suggested that Fife’s policy on gender had hardly been researched, certainly not to the extent of understanding of what the law required. It was ad hoc, on the hoof. It seems likely the same is true across the NHS, and probably throughout the public sector.

Throughout the process the approach of NHS Fife, its leadership, its lawyers and its board, has been underwhelming to say the least. Even now, it’s unclear who is taking responsibility for events.

Peggie enjoys a great deal of public support and sympathy. This kind of bureaucratic public pursuit of such an individual only adds to the sense of a vast, blank-faced state that is out of touch, spendthrift and incompetent. And if, as legal experts now expect, Peggie wins, the case is likely to cost the public a significant sum above that which has been spent so far.

First Minister John Swinney continues to insist on his confidence in NHS Fife. Given the SNP’s record on gender reform, this appears unwise. In the event of the health board’s defeat, it will certainly have been unwise, and will require a sharp and embarrassing U-turn by Swinney.

As the public watches this latest car crash unfold, they may be searching for a phrase to encapsulate it. I would refer them to my opening sentence.

[See also: Dishonesty now rules Scottish politics]