At a party a couple of weeks ago, I fell into the company of some former Scottish Labour MPs, ageing silverbacks who’d roamed the political jungle during the prime ministership of Tony Blair.

The scent of nostalgia filled the air as they talked of past successes and disasters.

There was hugely entertaining chat about the inadequacies of some of their comrades and, unsurprisingly, quite a lot about the failures of Scotland’s SNP government.

‘The thing is,’ said one, ‘they’ve stuffed the whole public sector with their cronies. They’ve stitched up the country.’

I nodded in agreement then told him I remembered another party once doing the same thing.

‘Who?’

‘Labour,’ I told him.

‘Aye, well,’ he laughed. ‘That’s politics.’

And, I’m afraid, he was right. 

Sidelined

Whichever party controls power at Holyrood (or Westminster, for that matter) calls the shots when it comes to the public sector.

Ministers use their influence to ensure key roles are filled by allies, while dissenting voices are sidelined.

Just as Scotland is now dominated by a Nationalist establishment, it was once Labour’s fiefdom.

Writing in yesterday’s Scottish Daily Mail, Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay highlighted the current existence of a ‘cosy club’ of state-funded activists, academics and charities driven not by the desire for progress but by the wish to please ministers.

This ‘obedient cohort’ said Mr Findlay, does very nicely under the SNP.

The Scottish Tory chief described a ‘Left-wing bubble’ containing quangos, third-sector agencies and charities which survive on government funding.

Joining those groups, wrote Mr Findlay, are the trade unions which continue to dictate Scottish education policy.

Mr Findlay’s intervention came shortly after his point was made for him by one of the SNP government’s many pet activists.

Dr Rebecca Don Kennedy is chief executive of the Equality Network, a charity which is largely funded with public money.

Last year alone, the organisation – which supports LGBT rights – received £645,258 from the Scottish Government.

Naturally, Dr Kennedy is fully signed-up to the now comprehensively discredited idea that it would be wise to allow anyone to self-identify into the legally-recognised sex of their choosing.

And she has a very low opinion of those women who’ve led the campaign to protect the sanctity of women’s single-sex spaces.

In a weekend newspaper interview, Dr Kennedy really let rip at those who have campaigned against self-ID and for the preservation of sex-based laws based on biology rather than feelings.

These women, said the charity boss, were driven by a ‘hateful obsession’.

According to Dr Kennedy, the women who have fought to preserve single-sex spaces are comparable to US President Donald Trump’s Right-wing supporters.

After claiming that April’s Supreme Court ruling which stated the words ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex had created a ‘mess’, she said she and her colleagues had been diverted by the issue from campaigning on such crucial issues as poverty and healthcare for LGBT people.

‘We’re constantly pulled away from that,’ said Dr Kennedy, ‘by this hateful obsession around trans women.’

Where was this obsession coming from? England? America?

‘I think now,’ she said, ‘we know it’s coming from concerted MAGA rhetoric’.

Dr Kennedy stopped short of naming names, but her dogwhistle rang out loud and clear.

The key organisation in fighting the crank ideology to which Dr Kennedy subscribes is For Women Scotland (FWS), a genuinely grassroots group begun by Marion Calder, Susan Smith and Trina Budge.

These women – who launched the legal action that led to the Supreme Court ruling – are not part of some Right-wing movement nor members of a Trumpish cult.

Rather, they are feminists who – not unreasonably –believe that women’s sex-based rights are more important than the feelings of men who declare they’ve transitioned.

The trio behind FWS are supported by tens of thousands of women across Scotland and beyond.

Quashing

Unlike Dr Kennedy, they are not supported with taxpayers’ money.

Among Dr Kennedy’s many ridiculous statements was the claim that the ‘ultimate objective’ of those campaigning to protect single-sex spaces was the ‘quashing’ of women’s rights.

Lashing out at the SNP’s crony state, Russell Findlay said the party had over-promoted people who would not succeed in the private sector.

He could have had Dr Kennedy in mind.

The charity boss’s lack of self-awareness is extraordinary. The women she smears as extremists are lifelong feminists whose position on the importance of single-sex spaces is based on unshakeable evidence.

They are not funded by shadowy Right-wing groups or by extremists but by fellow feminists and allies who wish to see some sanity restored to the discussion of women’s rights.

Dr Lucy Hunter Blackburn, co-editor of the best-selling The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, a collection of gender-critical essays

including one by novelist and philanthropist JK Rowling, is another of those irritating feminists who simply refuses to see the world as Dr Kennedy does.

I find it impossible to disagree with Dr Hunter Blackburn’s assertion that the ‘relentless, unjustified smearing’ of feminist campaigners by people paid for from the public purse has to stop.

Pander

Ministers, said the former civil servant, may not be happy that they have lost the argument over self-ID, but it was long past time for them to call off their attack dogs.

Of course, First Minister John Swinney will do no such thing. The SNP – still in the grip of extreme gender ideology – would rather pander to angry activists than engage with feminist campaigners.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling on the meaning, in law, of sex, Mr Swinney said he would be happy to meet representatives of For Women Scotland. Four months later, he has not done so.

Dr Kennedy’s views on gender are at odds with the mainstream and all good scientific evidence.

With bundles of public money behind her, she is the Goliath in the fight over women’s rights while FWS and others are the David.

Russell Findlay is right when he says Scotland has been damaged by the SNP’s cronyism.

The Nationalists have appointed a powerful network of activists and campaigners chosen not for their expertise but for their loyalty.

These people seem unable to think critically, preferring to learn SNP scripts on any subject.

Scotland desperately needs a break from this failing SNP government and its battalion of taxpayer-funded cronies.