Sandie Peggie case: Scotland needs a progressive political party to protect women's rights - I'd vote for them

There was no Top Of The Pops appearance for the lugubrious Glaswegian but, for a week or two, his record “Women Of The World” lingered around the lower end of the independent pop charts. Sung by Linda Hirst, the song is simple and direct. Over wheezing euphonium, Hirst repeats the lines: “Women of the word, take over, because if you don’t the world will come to an end and we haven’t got long.”

The album from which the single came has recently been reissued and, over the past week, I’ve listened to it frequently. The timing couldn’t have been more appropriate. Cutler and Hirst’s music has soundtracked days during which I’ve followed, with mounting horror and anger, the tribunal involving nurse Sandie Peggie, NHS Fife, and Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman.

READ MORE: The Sandie Peggie tribunal has revealed a class divide at the heart of gender debate

Peggie, you will know unless you have avoided all news sources over the past fortnight, is claiming discrimination and harassment by the health board and Upton after she was suspended for complaining she should not have to use a changing room with someone born male. Details of the case, so far, have been extraordinary.

Upton has insisted they’re biologically female and that sex is a “nebulous” concept (not so nebulous that they don’t consider themselves fully female), and we’ve heard jaw-dropping details about the way in which Peggie was treated during an investigation that started from the position that she - not Upton - was the problem.

The tribunal has now been paused and will resume in July but I do not for a single second believe this case requires a resolution for most people to make up their minds about who’s in the right.

Past polling on gender issues strongly suggests Peggie has the public on her side. Fewer than a third of Scots were ever in favour the failed plan by former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to introduce self-ID for trans people.The Conservatives aside, Scotland’s main political parties have been wildly out-of-step with public opinion on gender issue for years.

Sturgeon, of course, angrily rejected the concerns of feminist campaigners who pointed out that opening women’s safe spaces to men who claimed to be female was an incredibly stupid and dangerous thing to do.There will be much more to say about the case of Sandie Peggie in time.

Meanwhile, questions mount: why did the health board suspend a woman for asking for her legal right to a single-sex space to be respected? Why were allegations - for which no evidence has been presented - of unprofessional conduct by Peggie believed before an investigation had begun? Why did the board greenlight the expensive defence of a case which exposes their organisation as utterly dysfunctional?

Keen to understand the corporate mindset that got NHS Fife into this position, I emailed the organisation’s director of communications and engagement, Kirsty MacGregor, on Friday, asking if she could define “woman” for me. I await a reply.

While NHS Fife’s humiliation plays out, politicians of the “progressive” left remain silent. First Minister John Swinney and Labour’s Anas Sarwar continue to act as if they - once great supporters of reforming the Gender Recognition Act - have nothing to do with what has been described during the first two week’s of Peggie’s tribunal. Senior colleagues of Swinney and Sarwar tell me both men would dearly like this issue to go away.But, of course, it will not.

The SNP and Scottish Labour leaders have access to focus group findings that tell them the erosion of women’s rights by trans activists is something that engages and angers the majority. If Swinney and Sarwar continue to cower from this issue, the Scottish Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s Reform will have a free run at it. Both of those parties know the majority of voters agree with their positions that biological sex should always trump ideology when its comes to women’s spaces.

It strikes me that there is a huge space in our national political debate for gender critical voices from the left. At the 2003 Holyrood election, the Greens won seven seats with just 6.9 per cent of the vote in Scotland’s eight regional lists, from which 56 of 129 MSPs are elected through a proportional representation system. The Scottish Socialist Party sent six members to Hoyrood with just 6.7 per cent of the vote.

If the women who’ve led opposition to the increasingly unhinged demands of trans activists over recent years were so minded, they could stand candidates across the country in 2026 and cause an earthquake. A single-issue party - or even just a cooperative of independents - could take seats from the major parties in every part of the country. And even if those candidates did not meet the threshold for election, their presence in the campaign would concentrate the minds of those politicians currently too fearful to speak up on behalf of women’s rights.

There are plenty of talented former politicians out there who - if so minded - could create an impressive team to fight the next Holyrood election. A collective including, say, former SNP MP Joanna Cherry, ex-Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont, and former Labour MSP Jenny Marra would - even with just those three involved - terrify Swinney and Sarwar.

The campaign group For Women Scotland has bought together women from across the traditional political spectrum. Socialists and capitalists, nationalists and unionists, all of them have put aside disagreements to unite in one vitally important mission. If the will was there, we could be a crowd-funder away from the establishment of a new political force that would - at the very least - shame mainstream leaders into defending women and girls.

I’d vote for a party set up to protect women’s rights and I know many others would, too. As Linda Hirst sang in that almost-forgotten song by Ivor Cutler, “Men have had their shot and look at where we’ve got.”