When Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s campaign manager was plotting his general election grid, it is clear he did not include women’s rights as an issue that might disrupt his carefully calibrated “Change” message. But since Starmer’s ill-judged response to a young women’s question on BBC’s Question Time last week, he and senior members of his team have been dogged by questions about gender identity, the Equality Act, single-sex spaces and JK Rowling. If only McSweeney had taken notice of what has happened in Scotland in recent years, the party might have avoided headlines such as “Labour’s women problem” and “Labour has lost women’s trust over trans issues, admits Streeting”.

It was an excoriating op-ed in The Times last weekend by the aforementioned Rowling that turned Starmer’s impatient response to a question about sex (the biological sort) into a campaign car crash. The author wrote of her struggle to vote Labour, the party she once donated to, precisely because of its stubborn refusal to listen to women’s concerns about the clash of rights between women’s rights, based on their sex and those of men who identify as women. Labour’s response was confused and confusing. “Labour’s in a mess on gender and sex,” wrote leading commentator Sonia Sodha. “It won’t affect the election result and so there will be those in the party who think it doesn’t matter. But it was entirely avoidable if they had taken the time to understand the law, develop proper policy and brief spokespeople. They need to learn from this.”

Starmer could do worse than read The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, a bestselling book published last only last month, where more than 30 women — including Rowling —  describe in compelling first person accounts the significant moments from Scotland’s battle to protect women’s sex-based rights, in the wake of the SNP government’s decision to introduce self-ID, where anyone over 16 could change their legal sex marker by a simple administrative process. 

As the editors of the book — which traces the five years leading to the surprise resignation of Nicola Sturgeon in February 2023 — we were determined to showcase the solidarity among women across parties and, more remarkably, across Scotland’s constitutional divide. A unity that in the immediate aftermath of the divisive 2014 independence referendum would have seemed unlikely, and yet now seems completely natural. And with the Scottish Parliament’s 25th anniversary on 1 July, we had always planned that it should contribute to what we assumed would be a period of reflection on Holyrood’s first quarter-century.

Just as, five years ago, women across Scotland assumed that their political representatives would at least listen to their concerns about self-ID, we thought this book should interest Scotland’s political class, and those who report on it, both for its content and as a phenomenon. It includes previously unseen perspectives from women inside the political system, and from those watching it from outside, lifting the lid, for example, on the inner workings and failures of Holyrood’s much-vaunted committee system. But while it has attracted significant interest from London-based media, Scotland’s political, cultural and civic establishment seems less keen to hear from women with an awkward message about their failure of governance.  

A parliamentary motion welcoming the publication of the book, lodged by Conservative MSP Tess White has yet to attract support from MSPs in any of the four parties which were whipped to support the Gender Recognition Reform Bill 18 months ago. Despite some hard-to-miss broadsheet coverage, no space has yet been found anywhere in Scotland’s broadcast schedule for even a few minutes’ attention to the book’s appearance. And none of Scotland’s national women’s organisations has shown the slightest interest in the first book written by women in Scotland about their experience of its political system to make the Sunday Times bestseller list. 

Labour’s mess over women and the disinterest of Scotland’s political and culture elite in a book that chronicles one of the biggest failures of devolution that led directly to the resignation of a First Minister, are rooted in the same political failure. Over recent years, mainstream political parties, left or right, have become increasingly distant from the people they purport to represent. Vested interests, whether global charities or large corporations, have had more influence over MPs and MSPs than ordinary citizens, whose views are dismissed as not valid, or caricatured as a toxic culture war. Letters from constituents with the ‘wrong’ views go unacknowledged or receive a scolding response. Requests to meet are rejected. Even when a senior politician, such as the current Women’s minister Kemi Badenoch, dares to reflect the views of ordinary women, as she has done in recent months, she is told by a Scottish darling of the cultural establishment, actor David Tennant, to “shut up” and ideally to stop existing. Only a purely cynical interpretation of her motives is permitted. All this creates fertile ground for populists to flourish, at a time when more than ever we need to defend the value of conventional mainstream politics as a way of managing society and resolving tensions. Just look around the world.

And it was only when one of the most famous women in the world spoke out about her disenfranchisement from Labour that Starmer, the man who is likely to be Prime Minister next week, paid attention. But even then he got it wrong when he offered to meet with JK Rowling. I would be happy to meet, she posted on social media, but only after organisations representing women and LGB people denied access to him for years have been given personal meetings. 

We have a suggestion for Starmer and his team, and for Scotland’s new First Minister, John Swinney, who seems determined to repeat the mistake of his immediate predecessors. The reason why women are angry, why women won’t wheesht, is because the rules were changed without any consideration to the impact on women and girls. The foreword to our book is written by the mother of a learning disabled daughter. It is the essence of the book, the beating heart of a campaign, conceived and delivered by ordinary women. 

She writes: “I won’t lie. I won’t say a man is any type of woman. I won’t be forced to say women’s bodies don’t matter — aren’t matter. I won’t say woman is merely a fragile, flimsy feeling, or the wisp of a limitless thought that can be stretched as thin as a veil any man can slip on and off. I won’t pretend a woman is the sum total of the traits a man can emulate. To say this would be to say a man can stand in a woman’s place. And that place could be administering what should be same-sex intimate care to my vulnerable, disabled daughter. This woman will never wheesht.” And neither will the thousands of women across the UK who have, in recent years, discovered their political power. This is not over.