IMAGINE, for a moment, that the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the highest legal authority in the land, makes a definitive ruling. Let’s say it rules, for argument’s sake, that “woman” means adult human female. You know, the definition that once required no judicial clarification.
Now imagine public bodies, civil servants, NHS Trusts, equalities officers, university policy units, and your local quango quietly glance at the ruling… then just shrug.
“We see your legal reality,” they say. “But we’re going to stick with our truth instead.”
Welcome to Scotland in 2025, where the rule of law isn’t enforced, it’s merely suggested. A vibe. A feeling. Something to be considered, if convenient. A politely worded note from the dusty old types in wigs, useful only if it flatters the ideology of a highly politicised managerial class.
We’re being ruled by the Feelings Department
The Supreme Court recently ruled, clearly and unanimously, that under the Equality Act 2010, “sex” means biological sex. This wasn’t some academic footnote. It was a legal guardrail. A final word from the judiciary to halt the bureaucratic slide into unreality, where “woman” could mean anyone and therefore no one.So what did our brave public servants do in response? They ignored it. NHS Trusts continue to put men in female wards. There are still men in women’s jails. Public boards still appoint male-bodied people as “women” under diversity quotas. Civil servants behave as if the ruling never happened. And the Scottish Government? They are still issuing guidance that directly contradicts it.
The fascist’s favourite tactic: call your opponent one
Here’s the punchline. The same institutions now pretending the Supreme Court doesn’t exist have spent years responding to anyone who questions gender ideology with one tired tactic, i.e. call them fascists. Parents worried about their daughters in school toilets? Fascists. Women asking for single-sex spaces? Fascists. People quoting the Equality Act? Fascists too. You could be clutching a cup of tea, a signed Ruth Davidson biography, and still get accused of orchestrating a coup.Now, in the twilight of SNP dominance, John Swinney steps up to lead a coalition not of unity, but of unreality. His first grand gesture? A taxpayer-funded summit on extremism, where ministers arrived in government-issued Volvos, flat whites in hand, buzzing with the moral energy of a middle manager who’s just discovered unconscious bias training.
They gathered to tackle a threat so rare in Scotland it could comfortably hold its AGM in the janitor’s cupboard of a small Wetherspoons. But stopping extremism was never the point. This was a PR stunt. A rebranding exercise. The real mission was to badge up anyone defending biological reality, raising concerns about mass immigration, questioning rising unemployment, or wondering why so many luxury cars are apparently funded by Disability Living Allowance, as dangerous radicals.
When you spend years unravelling the meaning of words like “woman”, “equality”, and even “truth”, you eventually need a scapegoat. And if one doesn’t exist, you simply invent one.
Enter Maggie Chapman. Green MSP, full-time Twitter moralist, and part-time Equalities Committee member. After the Supreme Court reaffirmed that sex means what your granny always said it meant, Chapman branded the ruling bigoted. Not because the judges got the law wrong, but because they failed to run it past a focus group of trans activists first. Apparently, the legal process now requires a trigger warning.
When people suggested this sort of comment might be a smidge inappropriate for someone overseeing human rights legislation, the SNP handled it in true Holyrood style. They held a vote. One they controlled. One with the dramatic tension of a rigged tombola.
It wasn’t accountability. It was a pantomime. Chapman stayed. The SNP nodded. And the public were once again treated like background extras in a slow-moving parody of democracy.
This isn’t leadership. It’s a protection racket wrapped in inclusive branding and sold as virtue.
This isn’t solidarity. It’s sedition in soft focus
But ask yourself. Who is actually behaving like fascists here?Who is redefining language to suit the regime? Who is bypassing legal authority in favour of ideology? Who is capturing public institutions and silencing dissent? Who is insisting that the rights of the many must be sacrificed for the feelings of the few? It’s not the women from mumsnet holding up dictionaries. It’s the apparatchiks rewriting them.You don’t need to march down the Royal Mile in jackboots to install fascism. All you need is a class of bureaucrats who believe the law is subordinate to their feelings, and a citizenry too polite or too intimidated to stop them.
What we are seeing is fascistic behaviour with a flat white and a rainbow lanyard. A soft managerial authoritarianism, run by people who confuse their HR policy manual with the Magna Carta.
They don’t burn books. They just “update the language.”
They don’t jail critics. They defund and de-platform them.
They don’t ban speech. They “moderate harmful views.”
They talk about fighting fascism with the moral superiority of a saint in need of confession, all while quietly lacing up its boots.
The price of compliance? Your rights
Let’s be clear. This is not about trans people. It’s not even about identity. It’s about the state abandoning its contract with its citizens. The promise that we are equal under the law, not unequal under ideology. When public bodies decide they will follow the law only when it suits their worldview, democracy isn’t just under threat. It is already performing its own autopsy.We now have a government within a government. An ideological fifth column embedded in the institutions we fund and depend on. They are running their own reality show while pretending it’s business as usual. And if that’s not fascistic, what is?Because when public servants ignore court rulings, treat law as optional, and govern by dogma and smear, we are not living in a democracy anymore. We are living in something else entirely.
And if you dare to notice? Don’t worry. Your labels are already printed, and the hit piece is on its way.
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Image of Scotland Women’s Rights Network poster
