A week is a long time in politics. The past fortnight feels like an eternity. 
 
Two weeks ago, the SNP leadership produced an 11-point plan conceding the need for a plan B if the British Government continue to refuse a section 30 order and embracing the legal route for which I have long advocated. I cannot pretend I’m completely satisfied with the detail of the plan but it’s a step in the right direction. 

One week ago, the Justice Secretary introduced an amendment to the Hate Crime Bill to address concerns raised by a wide range of civic society bodies, MSPs and others. The amendment was designed to ensure that women who wish to discuss women’s sex-based rights would be protected from charges of transphobic hate crime. This seemed reasonable in a democracy bound by the duty to protect free speech under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. 

But this week the Justice Secretary withdrew his amendment after (unsubstantiated) allegations of transphobia, and I found myself summarily dismissed from the position of SNP Spokesperson on Justice and Home Affairs. I got 30 minutes notice of the announcement, no proper explanation of why I was being sacked and no acknowledgment of, or any thanks at all for, the work I have done in that role over the last five and a half years. Indeed, the press release announcing the reshuffle was a masterly piece of Stalinist revisionism in which I was not even mentioned. Air brushed from history. A non-person. Sounds familiar? 

We need to talk about Spy cops. Undercover police officers who infiltrated climate change and other protest groups and formed relationships with women activists. Some of these relationships lasted for years, children were born, and plans made for the future. And then one day the women woke up to find their partners had vanished without trace and without explanation, never to be seen again. Only years later they found out who these people really were, undercover spies working for the state to disrupt and undermine legitimate protest. 

This scandal is currently being investigated by a public inquiry. You would think that the British Government would want to address the scandal and be waiting for the outcome of the inquiry to do so. But no. You would be wrong. Instead they are railroading through legislation to ensure this activity can continue, on a statutory basis. with little or no oversight. 

 The inauguration of Joe Biden this week has been a moment of hope in dark and difficult times. It has reminded us that national renewal is possible after a period of division and turmoil. The international euphoria was palpable. Some might say a little over the top. But for myself I must confess I was both laughing with joy and crying with relief as the new President and Vice President took their oaths of office. America, the so-called land of the free, has had a pretty rough time recently. The storming of the Capitol was shocking. But so too are the endless series of brutal homicides of black men at the hands of the state. 

In a lecture marking the approach of Holocaust Memorial Day, David Miliband has argued that the fact that the most powerful democratic country in the world is under attack from within is symptomatic of the retreat of the rule of law across the world. He reminded us that those who are in thrall to government cannot hold them in check and that we all have a duty of vigilance to stand against the abuse of power. He criticised the tone of contemporary political discourse and argued we should aspire to passionate disagreement and avoid demonization of those with whom we disagree. 

Over New Year I have been re-reading one of my favourite novels; Extraordinary Women by Compton Mackenzie. It’s a richly comic satire based on his and his wife’s experiences in lesbian society on the island of Capri where they lived during and after the first world war. Unfortunately, it’s out of print but if you can get hold of a copy, I highly recommend it. Like many of his fellow founders of the SNP, Compton Mackenzie was an intellectual and a free thinker. If he had not been prepared to question conventional beliefs and the status quo in the 1930s he would not have been able to envisage an independent Scotland. 

Members of the SNP can rightly be proud of those who founded our party. If we look at the biographies of just a handful of Mackenzie’s fellow founders, we see writers and thinkers abound. Robert Cunningham Grahame, writer journalist and adventurer; Florence Marian McNeill, folklorist, writer and suffragist; and Andrew Dewar Gibb QC, Regius Professor of law at the University of Glasgow and Chairman of the Saltire Society. These people were nationalists and internationalists who celebrated their country’s culture but also believed in vigorous debate and analysis.