Scottish politics, particularly within parties, has never been renowned for kindness and reasoned discussion. When our natural disposition to argumentativeness is combined with the culture war and spiced up with a hearty dose of religious bigotry, we present an even more unedifying sight than usual. Not for nothing is the irascible Groundskeeper Willie in The Simpsons portrayed as a Scot. Looking at Scottish politics I sometimes think he was forced to emigrate because all the other Scots thought him too much of a wimp.
The fight for the leadership of the Scottish National Party, now in full feral swing, shows Scots at their very worst. Since Nicola Sturgeon abandoned the ship which she steered on to the rocks of intransigent transgender insanity, we have three candidates to succeed her: Humza Yousaf, Kate Forbes and Ash Regan.
Ash Regan, who resigned from the cabinet over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, is on the outside in the betting and is generally held to have little chance against the two leading contenders. Nevertheless, she has come out strongly against Kate Forbes on same-sex marriage and nailed her colours to the mast on most progressive issues.
The continuity Sturgeon candidate backed by the SNP establishment is Humza Yousaf, one-time Transport Secretary, Justice Secretary and at present Health Secretary. At every post he has held Yousaf has failed, perhaps most spectacularly as Health Secretary where he has been labelled the ‘worst health secretary since devolution’.
Despite the overwhelming majority of Scots being opposed to the Gender Recognition Bill, Yousaf insists he will fight tooth and nail for the right of confused youngsters to have irreversible surgery and for men to invade women’s safe spaces simply because they claim they are women.
Yet as far as the SNP establishment are concerned Yousaf is the sane and sensible choice. The one being portrayed as deranged and unelectable is Kate Forbes. There has been an avalanche of attacks on Forbes from within the SNP and the Scottish media. Her interview with Colin Mackay on STV News on Tuesday was less an interview and more an interrogation. By comparison the later interview with Humza Yousaf was a cosy fireside chat between close chums.
Forbes has made the neophyte political mistake of being honest. She has made it clear that she actually believes the teachings of her church, the Free Church of Scotland. ‘To be straight, I believe in the person of Jesus Christ. I believe that he died for me, he saved me and that my calling is to serve and to love him and to serve and love my neighbours with all my heart and soul and mind and strength. So that, for me, is essential to my being. Politics will pass. I was a person before I was a politician, and that person will continue to believe that I am made in the image of God.’
Her Christian faith has shaped her political views, especially her genuine concern for the poor. This is a family trait: her parents worked for a Christian charity amongst India’s poorest. As well as being opposed to gender self-identification, she says she wouldn’t have voted for same-sex marriage if she had been an MSP when it went through the Scottish Parliament. When it comes to abortion rights Forbes is also openly pro-life. Shockingly for many politicians, she thinks having children out of wedlock is wrong.
You’re free to be whoever you want to be, just so long as you’re not a Christian
That someone is saying what many Scots think is causing an outbreak of fainting with cries for smelling salts amongst the SNP, who pride themselves on their progressive stances. According to Toni Giugliano, the SNP’s policy chief, the red line issues for the SNP include transgender legislation, assisted suicide, abortion buffer zones and the rights of sex workers. Forget the poor, the failing health service, the inability to provide ferries, the drugs death toll, a crumbling education system and Humza Yousaf’s appalling Hate Crime laws.
This legislation, introduced in 2021, in effect created a new blasphemy law for those who dared to question the ‘protected characteristics’ decided by the SNP government. The progressives who control the SNP have decided Kate Forbes is a heretic. One SNP activist has already reported her to the SNP disciplinary process for transphobia for saying that a man who changes gender is still biologically a man. Science is no defence within the progressive SNP.
Forbes has been abandoned by many MSPs who originally supported her. They seem astonished that she should continue to hold views which were common knowledge years before this leadership race. When the SNP establishment which controls patronage in Scotland leans on someone they stay lent on.
It is not just the SNP and the media who have come out against the Presbyterian Christian: attacks have come from within the achingly progressive Church of Scotland. Lorna Hood, one-time Moderator of the General Assembly of the C of S, made the bizarre claim that it is ‘disingenuous’ for Forbes to claim that mainstream Christianity is opposed to same-sex marriage. Only a small number of declining denominations, mainly in the West, support same-sex marriage; the overwhelming majority of Christians worldwide still hold to the teaching of the Bible and tradition that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.
Kevin McKenna, writing in the Herald about Forbes’s leadership challenge, is of the opinion that ‘the treatment that she’s already beginning to receive offers further evidence of the poison now circulating at the top of the SNP. That you’re free to be whoever you want to be, just so long as you’re not a Christian’.
However, despite the clear anti-Christian bigotry, she still stands a chance. If Kate Forbes stays in the race, and the rank and file voting members of the SNP listen to their neighbours and friends, she could do the improbable and bring sanity back to Scottish politics.
A Grain of Sand 
Yousaf is the person who was allowed in Parliament to get away with an astonishing attack on white people, claiming to be outraged that so many of the great and good of the country were white – a country whose population is, of course, predominantly white. I recall vividly the way in which he spat out the word “white”, betraying his visceral hatred as the true motivation for his invective.
A loathsome individual.
What you say is true, but on the other hand he ticks all the right woke boxes and that is what really matters to the progressives and the SNP.
I understand that Humza Yousaf is a Muslim. I wonder if he is familiar with the Islamic views on same sex marriage and gender issues:
In 2007 six Moroccan men were sentenced to between four and ten months in prison for “homosexuality”. In 2014, eight men were jailed for three years by a Cairo court after the circulation of a video of them allegedly taking part in a private wedding ceremony between two men on a boat on the Nile. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Iraq has stated “It is not permissible for a man to look at another man with lust; similarly, it is not permissible for a woman to look at another woman with lust. Homosexuality is harãm. Similarly, it is forbidden for a female to engage in a sexual act with another female, i.e. lesbianism.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_in_Islam#
Perhaps Mr. Yousaf does not care about what the Qu’ran and the Hadiths have to say about same-sex relationships. Or perhaps he simply does not know?
By comparison, not only does Ms. Forbes know what the Bible says about same-sex relationships, she has stood up for Christian values and refuses to compromise. Sadly, Scotland is now a secular society and even church leaders have succumbed to the liberal views of politicians. God help us all.
Reblogged this on Andy's Current Affairs Blog.
Kate Forbes could not have spoken better than she did, simple, clear and honest.
Almost the best thing about her statement was the way it lured out from under their stones a lot of pundits whose kneejerk response was that a GOOD politician, faced with those questions, should OF COURSE have equivocated, or lied outright.
Too many Scots may be too far gone for the point to strike them as it ought, but we can hope that such an example of integrity will stand, and ultimately not be lost.
As for the leadership, it’s in God’s hands. All we really need to pray is that he dispose of it in mercy, and not in judgment.
The integrity of Kate Forbes shines a light on the moral pygmies around her, especially those politicians who first of all supported her and then fled at the first hint of criticism.
She stands head an shoulder above most politicians and I believe the general public recognise this and actually agree with her.
“As for the leadership, it’s in God’s hands.”
If it is in God’s hands what is to worry about? The fact is that it is Satan’s hands and not God’s.
This strong & courageous lady needs our prayers. Like John Smith in the Labour Party, I almost think she is far too good for the SNP – or for the current world of party politics. If the divine purpose in her standing is simply to expose the demonic powers of lies & hatred that occupy the political high-places then she is certainly fulfilling her calling. I hope the Lord doesn’t call her home like He did for John Smith, but since she has just become a mum there is a part of me that hopes that when this battle is fought she gets to spend more time pursuing the the even higher calling of raising her child. If she is to become leader then the malice & enmity she is receiving now will pale into insignificance by comparison. What a shame that the best men of God seem to be women and the men seem like eunuchs … almost as if we are seeing spiritual transgenderism!!!
This is not about Kate Forbes. This is about a different world view. A philosophy which puts forward a creator God – who intervenes and to whom we are ultimately accountable; a God of ‘miracles’; a God who reveals himself (to those who want to see. The attacks, the hatred, is against this.
Thank God for Kate: for her simple articulation of this philosophy. But this is just the beginning. It’s ‘Game on’ for Scotland.
There is nothing new here. It’s happened before – in Rome; here around 1560; with the Covenanters Disruption etc.
That creating,, intervening God who dramatically promoted Kate 3 years ago, and who has prepared her for this moment, can go further, and sustain her and us in the maelstrom ahead. It’s looking like He intends to preserve her through this lions’ den. He can do more. Not least in the lives of those who currently oppose.
And he might even be willing to turn the tide in our nation and in the West.
The attack is against this philosophy.
Thank you so much for placing this squarely in its historical and spiritual perspective. Throughout the West we are involved in a conflict of worldviews, the secular which is seeking to eradicate God from all aspect of life and the faithful which is seeking to not only hold fast to the truth but to push back against the tide of secularism. In the present struggle in Scotland we are seeing the latest aspect of an eternal conflict.
At last the truth is out. SNP members are voting with their feet according to various newspaper articles.
2019 – 125,000 members
2021 – 104,000 members
2022 – 85,000 (at the end of the year)
2023 – 72,000 (as of March)
The drop is linked to the controversial SNP gender reforms pushed through by the SNP & Greens.