Sturgeon has given up on independence

This trans row doesn’t help the separatists’ cause. It suggests the First Minister is positioning for a new job

To her supporters, and to those paying a first visit to the tortured world of Scotland’s constitutional future, the blocking of Nicola Sturgeon’s gender reform measure is a major crisis that will give a significant boost to her plans for independence.

The reality, however, is that with or without the unprecedented move of Alister Jack, the Scottish Secretary, Sturgeon’s prospects of achieving the break-up of Britain are fast disappearing. Consequently, suspicion is growing that, although she is using the row as a stick with which to beat the UK Government, her tactic seems as much about securing her own future as that of Scotland’s. And that her current policy choices are little more than a sign that she’s drawing up a CV for a new international career after she steps down as First Minister.

Are both her gender bill and newfound support for shutting down further North Sea oil and gas extraction – a bizarre state of affairs for the leader of a party that used to say “It’s Scotland’s Oil” and still claims that Scotland is “energy rich” – designed to suggest that she is a major figure in the forefront of international efforts on social reform and climate change?

Certainly, neither is of much assistance to the SNP’S core demand to leave the UK.

Following the Supreme Court verdict that she does not have the power to hold a second independence referendum without UK approval, she plans to offer her activists a confused and confusing independence road map at a special party conference in March.

Either they approve a plan for the SNP to win a majority of votes in next year’s general election, thus triggering negotiations on Scotland leaving the UK, or, if the UK refuses to comply, the SNP would seek to gain 50 per cent of the vote in the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections, and then demand power for Holyrood to hold another referendum.

Got that? I’d be surprised if all SNP supporters can make head or tail of it. One veteran who I consulted said: “On option one, we’d lose. And on option two, we wouldn’t win. It’s really as simple as that. It’s clear Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t have a clue.”

On the gender issue, her bill would have made it law in Scotland for 16-year-olds to change their gender but the UK Government believed it would have had repercussions south of the border, breaching equality laws and possibly allowing transwomen from Scotland to access women-only safe areas in the rest of the UK.

In her counter-attack, the First Minister has concentrated on accusing the Government of a democratic “outrage” in its use of what’s known as a Section 35 intervention to prevent her measure from gaining Royal Assent, the first time this method had been used to stop Scottish legislation in the 25-year history of devolution.

For his part, Jack emphasised that his opposition was not about vetoing a Scottish measure on any grounds other than its legal implications, saying that it would have had “a serious adverse impact” on womenonly spaces.

The First Minister clearly hopes that his action will inflame Scottish opinion against the UK Government, which has also been consistently attacked by the SNP for refusing to sanction another independence referendum.

And she insists that she will seek a judicial review of this “block”, adding that the Scottish Secretary’s action could be the first of many such blockings of Holyrood-approved legislation that the Government opposed.

I’m bound to say that doesn’t sound very likely. If that were the case, many other bits of nationalist legislation might well have been stopped before now – the free university tuition fees system in Scotland, to name but one.

And while Sturgeon is trying to light a flame under this issue, Jack infuriated her fans by saying he preferred to “take the heat out of the debate”. Moreover, in spite of the large majority the gender reform bill won at Holyrood, there has been widespread public opposition to the changes.

The trans row is not a constitutional crisis, as some commentators would have us believe. Nor does it assist those who want to break up Britain. At best it’s a legal wrangle; at worst it’s a job application.