WHEN Jacinda Arden quit as New Zealand’s Prime Minister earlier this week, The Jouker didn’t think it would take long for the opposition to start calling for Nicola Sturgeon to do the same.
Despite being First Minister for eight years out of the nearly 16 that the SNP have been in charge of the Scottish Government, and consistently winning elections over the Tories and Labour, opposition politicians are always quick to call for a resignation, and will apparently use any excuse.
This week, Patrick O’Flynn, a former East England MEP who was once elected for Ukip before defecting to the Social Democratic Party (SDP), apparently did not see the irony of Ardern’s resignation – which some of her colleagues have suggested was due to sexist abuse on social media – being weaponised against another female politician.
READ MORE: Holyrood Weekly: The National launches first podcast in new series
Flynn claimed that Ardern’s resignation was due to her falling out of favour, and that her lockdown approach to Covid turned the wave of popular opinion against her.
But the former MEP’s real reason for his fury at two female politicians is hinted at. He accused Ardern of supporting “identity politics” and claimed Sturgeon will be next over her support of gender reforms.
In an opinion piece for The Telegraph, he wrote: “And though it is a little too early to know for sure, the same slide from zenith to nadir now looks to be in progress for Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who seems to find it incomprehensible that majority opinion does not endorse her radical stance on gender self-ID or consider it kind.”
That “radical” stance, to allow transgender people to self-identify and remove many of the barriers to acquiring a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), was supported by Tory Prime Minister Theresa May in 2018.
This was of course before Boris Johnson took over a year later, and the UK Government U-turned in 2020.
And which majority opinion could O’Flynn be referring to here? Does he mean the Holyrood election in 2021 where the Scottish public voted in politicians from the SNP, Greens, Labour, and LibDems who had the gender reforms in their manifestos?
Or is it the “majority” that Douglas Ross has claimed exists but has not yet provided any evidence for?
We wonder what it is about women in power that make fleeting politicians like Flynn and others so uncomfortable.
READ MORE: Independence, Brexit, the monarchy: New poll series starts TODAY
If Ardern was a male politician, would the BBC be running headlines like: “Can women have it all?”
We doubt it. As Betteridge's law says: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'."
So what’s clearly implied in the BBC's headline is that women can’t have it all, and that they should line up and accept the toxic misogynistic abuse they are subjected to in the public eye.
The BBC deleted the tweet regarding Jardern and accepted that the original headline “wasn’t suitable”, but made no comment on the sexist framing.
We wonder why.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel