Over the weekend we narrowly avoided a mass extinction level event as the forces of the political and media class Saltire waving Independence march came face to face with the oppositional Union Jack clad counter protesters on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.
In the blue corner, Ross Greer, Scotland’s identity politics poster child, while in the red corner we have Niall Fraser, Scotland’s rabble rousing identity politics failed abortion.
Luckily for us all, a reluctance to engage with a class outside its own, and a police cordon, Ross and Niall did not actually come face to face, else time and space would surely have collapsed in on itself, taking us all with them.
For the past 12 years our politics in Scotland have descended into continual accusation and counter accusation around gender identity and immigration to the point where a disagreement over plans to reshape Glasgow both architecturally and socially draws accusations of “rAciSm aGainSt fOreiGners’ rather than a discussion about the economics and sustainability of placing all our eggs in a tourism and international student basket.
There is no clearer example of this than with the comparison of two young ginger haired men who, if one didn’t pay close attention, would swear were birthed by the same Mother.
Ross, now The Green Party’s co-leader (because only having a man as leader would be confirming the patriarchy presumably) wraps himself in the flags of both the Saltire and a trans flag, now in its umpteenth variation due to needing to affirm pronouns from Zi to Zhinola, while his twin, Niall, too toxic even for Reform, is currently trying to reclaim the Saltire by flying it alongside the Union Jack (and the Red Hand of Ulster - IYKYK).
Both claim to speak for the ‘working class’ who, having been failed by successive Conservative and Labour and SNP governments, have suddenly become a fashionable identity it seems.
The problem is, neither Niall or Ross do.
Working class issues are rooted in very simple, though for successive governments, seemingly impossible to address, issues: jobs, poverty and housing.
For Ross, none of these issues can be tackled unless you first ascribe to the concept that trans women are women. For Niall, nothing but remigrating anyone with a skin tone darker than his own pale blue can bring about a society where its citizens aren’t being crushed by the spiralling costs of merely surviving.
Hence we get the spectacle of Ross walking arm in arm with a miniskirted ‘Davina’ on the Royal Mile as Niall screams ‘perverts’ from the sidelines while pulling a ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’ pose.
As a society we must come together and reject both of these ginger haired protagonists.
In days gone by both would have been bullied out of the limelight - stuffed in a school locker and only released to attend their ‘assistant to the regional manager’ jobs - but thanks to 50 years of neoliberal prozac, both of these men are given a public platform, to the embarrassment of us all.
Of course Davina should be allowed to dress however they want and be treated with the same respect every other member of our society has, and at the same time, of course placing thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers into communities, already crippled by decades of neglect from our political class, is going to put further strain on housing, jobs and social services.
So perhaps the next time you see either of these two ginger haired peas spouting their nonsense consider this:
We live in a country where ‘Sir’ Tom Hunter, a shoe salesman, is worth almost £1 billion. JK Rowling, who wrote 7 books about a wizard, is also worth almost £1 billion. The average nurse in Scotland, someone tasked with taking care of us when we are sick, would have to work continuously for 27,000 years to earn that.
Meanwhile, 36% of our children in Glasgow are living in poverty, there is a 3-5 year wait for a council house in Edinburgh, and if you live in a rural part of energy rich Scotland, almost 50% of you are fuel poor.
These are real problems in need of real solutions, none of which are going to be solved by two little ginger men slinging mud at each other about how someone looks or what they believe.
And just for the record, some of my best friends are ginger.
