If a week is a long time in politics, it feels like a lifetime since Nicola Sturgeon resigned. The SNP looked unassailable largely thanks to Sturgeon’s powerful political prowess — but seven days later, the once disciplined SNP is all over the place, largely due to the frontrunner and Finance Minister Kate Forbes, who has gone from rising star to car crash extraordinaire in one day because of her deeply held religious views which don’t quite seem in step with the modern world. She doesn’t like gay marriage and then went on to say that children being born outside marriage was “wrong” but not to worry because that was just her personal view. To call her a dinosaur would be unfair to the inhabitants of Jurassic Park.
She and her allies claim that she’s being discriminated against on religious grounds because people are asking these questions. This is disingenuous and madly naïve. If you seek to lead a country, your values matter. They tell us — your citizens — who you really are and what matters to you because to govern is to choose. If you fundamentally believe that abortion or being gay is a sin, I’m afraid that is a problem if you are the most powerful person in the land with decision making ability and real influence. We only need to look across the pond at how abortion rights have been rolled back thanks to Donald Trump’s destructive time in office. No-one ever thought a political climate could exist where Roe v Wade was reversed but here we are. It’s so easy to turn back the clock on equality.
