Holyrood's elite has created conditions for rise of great Reform con
Feminists who, in the course of many decades, had fought for women's rights, found that they too were branded Fascists and bigots because they opposed biological men gaining access to their private spaces. The five Supreme Court judges who have now clarified this position in law are also bigots, according to Holyrood's Deputy Convenor of its Equalities committee, as is the European Human Rights Commission who endorsed the judges' ruling. She remains in her post.
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It's not enough now merely to disagree or criticise: only Fascism will do. For, once you've been so labelled it becomes easier to remove you from your post if you work in Scotland's public omni-sector.
For the record, I don't believe anyone in Scottish public life is a Fascist. I don't see people who believe in a one-party state or who are in favour of establishing a quasi-military police force reinforced by extra-judicial powers. What I have seen in the devolved era is a civic belief system that's been established by stealth and carefully nurtured by special interest groups which work against the interests and traditions of a majority of Scottish people, especially those belonging to working-class communities.
I believe also that the SNP, Scotland's eternal party of government, has been gate-crashed by groups and individuals who care little for independence, except as providing cover for their own illiberal agendas. These range from the policy of placing violent men in women's prisons and imposing pronouns in the workplace to backing the NATO military alliance whose ruinous diplomacy has brought us to the brink of war with Russia.
It includes indulging the Scottish Greens, whose clumsy attempts to impose climatism on the population has cost us many millions of pounds and speak of an underlying loathing for working class people who insist on clinging to their old, unsustainable ways.
What's much more worrying is what has emerged in the course of devolved era. This is the emergence of a sprawling, a-political class who proceed on a gaseous and shape-shifting suite of values and ethics. They swirl and churn endlessly in a vortex of slogans, mission statements and labels, but never land.
Kate Forbes received criticism for her deeply-held religious views (Image: Jeff J Mitchell) They don't believe in anything substantial beyond a collective credo of no-belief and no-value. The Scottish National Party no longer believes in independence; the Scottish Greens have subordinated stewardship of the natural environment to identity politics; the Labour Party are softening up the populace to prepare for global war by spending billions on more weapons of mass destruction and the Liberal Democrats have a leader who was last seen getting heated about Holyrood's toilet arrangements. Devolution has delivered a class of politicians who, quite literally, stand for nothing more than getting elected again.
For an all-consuming void like this to have settled on the highest offices in the land, two major mechanisms are required. One is the establishment of a system of patronage so vast that its machinery reaches in to every public office in the land. It's why a country with a population of 5.5m is governed by an administration employing almost 30 ministers with a portfolio of 32 local authorities. We have become a panjandrum nation.
These are reinforced by a vast lobbying sector that didn't exist before 1999. Their task has been to create a civic/entrepreneurial organism kept alive by fat public contracts. Experience, skill and cost-effectiveness count for little in this sector unless you agree to sign up to Holyrood's cultural agenda.
Even so, this in itself wouldn't be sufficient for such a metastasis to have occurred. For that, you require slowly to eliminate dissenting voices and monitor the smart people and their smart thoughts.
For 20 years or so, this was easily concealed and public trust was maintained. In the Sturgeon/Swinney era though, there's been a quickening, so that cabinet posts are now occupied by a cohort of barely-literate fools promoted well beyond their paltry abilities on the proviso that they keep their mouths and their minds shut.
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The great Holyrood toilet debate was one of those rare occasions when we got to glimpse the full reality. This is what happens when you pursue an internal policy of forcibly removing talent and replacing them with mediocrity. It's the political equivalent of consanguinity.
Most recently it's been evident in a multi-million-pound recovery mega-structure formed by a handful of superannuated public agencies. Their task has been to sell the lie that the political elites give a single flying toss about poor people dying in their thousands, not of addiction, but raw, grinding poverty.
For the first time, I sense that this is cutting through to the Scottish public, a development that the political elite have worked hard to prevent. When this happens it's inevitable that a party proclaiming fake everyman values such as Reform would come to exploit the situation. No matter what happens at the Hamilton, Stonehouse and Larkhall by-election on Thursday, Scotland will be the losers.
Kevin McKenna is a Herald writer and columnist and Scottish Feature Writer of the Year.
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