Mad “Maggie” Chapman
She is a danger warn’s STEPHEN DAISLEY:
Maggie Chapman is a political horror show who would embarrass a parliament more worthy of the name
I have spent longer than I care to remember documenting the ineptitudes and inadequacies of the Scottish Parliament.
I have spent longer than I care to remember documenting the ineptitudes and inadequacies of the Scottish Parliament.
Years upon years given to gathering evidence of the sundry ways in which an over-sold institution has under-delivered — and then some.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of columns marshalling my case that devolution was a historic error and that, far from closing the ‘democratic deficit’, it has rent open a new chasm between the Scottish public and a remote, unaccountable elite at Holyrood.
A life’s work.
And along comes Maggie Chapman and makes my job obsolete.
Because who needs me to point out the absurdity of a parliament to which Chapman is capable of getting elected?
Who needs to be told that Holyrood’s committee system is weak, ineffectual and unfit for purpose when Chapman is not only a member of the equalities, human rights and civil justice committee but its deputy convenor?
Chapman is not some oddity who wandered in off the street. She is the living, breathing, rainbow-lanyarded embodiment of devolution and its elevation of a class of self-righteous mediocrities and self-deluding cranks who believe they can solve world peace when they can’t even solve A&E waiting times.
Ultra-woke Green MSP Maggie Chapman is refusing to back down over comments she made describing a Supreme Court ruling on gender as ‘bigotry’ and ‘hatred’
Ultra-woke Green MSP Maggie Chapman is refusing to back down over comments she made describing a Supreme Court ruling on gender as ‘bigotry’ and ‘hatred’
The Scottish Green MSP will face an attempt this week to remove her as deputy convenor. The Conservatives want her gone for her outrageous comments on the Supreme Court in the wake of its landmark ruling clarifying that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex.
At a rally of gender activists in Edinburgh, Chapman decried the ‘bigotry, prejudice and hatred that we see coming from the Supreme Court’.
I’m with the Tories on this one: Maggie, Maggie, Maggie — out, out out.
And not just the Tories. The Faculty of Advocates issued a rare statement denouncing her ‘appalling comments’ as ‘outrageous’ as well as ‘irresponsible and reprehensible’.
The legal professionals’ association accused Chapman of ‘fail[ing] to respect the rule of law’, ‘creat[ing] a risk of danger to the members of the Court’, and even ‘an egregious breach’ of the law. The Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act 2008 says members of the Holyrood parliament ‘must uphold the continued independence of the judiciary’.
The Faculty has called her comments ‘incompatible’ with her continued role as deputy convenor.
There are some who view this as a freedom of speech issue, and it’s important to address that charge.
Judges should not be above reproach. In an open society, people must be at liberty to critique, decry, mock and insult all aspects of the state, and that includes the courts.
Ms Chapman also shared a tweet from another X user that read: ¿Don¿t let the Western media fool you into thinking it¿s terrorism, this is decolonisation¿ in the wake of the October 7 rape and slaughter of Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists
Ms Chapman also shared a tweet from another X user that read: ‘Don’t let the Western media fool you into thinking it’s terrorism, this is decolonisation’ in the wake of the October 7 rape and slaughter of Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists
That goes for a member of the public just as much as a renowned legal scholar. If anything, we are a little too delicate about adverse commentary on the judiciary, who are a more resilient lot than they’re given credit for.
The difference here is that Chapman is an MSP and, what’s more, deputy convenor of a committee intimately involved in equalities legislation. She has obligations under the 2008 Act. Still, in the view of this layman, these obligations should not preclude MSPs from critiquing judgments.
Criticising court rulings does not imperil the independence of the judiciary where those criticisms relate to the proper application of the law and are expressed in measured, respectful tones.
If Chapman believed the Court had erred in its interpretation of, say, the Sex Discrimination Regulations 1999, and had said so in those terms, there would have been none of this furore.
Instead, she attacked the motivations of the justices in the most incendiary way possible.
Words have meaning and the meaning of the words she used is difficult to dispute.
The Cambridge English Dictionary defines bigotry as ‘the fact of having and expressing strong, unreasonable beliefs and disliking other people who have different beliefs or a different way of life’.
Similarly, it describes prejudice as ‘an unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling, especially when formed without enough thought or knowledge’.
As for hatred, it is ‘an extremely strong feeling of dislike’.
Each term identifies the Court with instincts and biases that are at odds with a judicial temperament. To use such language against Lord Hodge and his colleagues is to imply they were not interpreting statutes but substituting their own personal, hateful preferences. They were, in effect, discriminating against trans people from the bench purely because they don’t like them.
Every MSP who votes to keep Chapman on as deputy convenor is endorsing this character assassination. They are saying that this is acceptable behaviour in politics, that their committee aspires to the lofty discursive heights of an ill-tempered Facebook post.
They are also setting a precedent for parliamentarians to speak in similar terms about court judgments they disfavour. An MSP who accuses judges of a ‘two-tier’ approach to sentencing could expect a scolding from the Faculty of Advocates, but no one who backs Chapman would have any standing to do likewise.
Lower standards for your mates, and you lower them for your foes, too.
Maggie Chapman is not worth lowering your standards for. She is a political horror show who would embarrass a parliament more worthy of the name.
In response to the October 7 attack on Israel, she shared a tweet from another X user that read: ‘Don’t let the Western media fool you into thinking it’s terrorism, this is decolonisation.’ October 7 saw Palestinian terrorists slaughter 1,200 Israelis, including children, while also raping women, kidnapping babies, and shooting family pets. Chapman later expressed ‘regret’ that her soft-peddling of the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Shoah caused ‘significant upset and anger for some’.
She supported a 2022 Scottish Green motion to suspend ties with the Green Party of England and Wales over its supposed ‘transphobic rhetoric and conduct’.
Asked whether the age limit should be lowered to allow eight-year-olds to change their sex legally, she said: ‘I think in principle we should be exploring that.’
When Pam Gosal objected to LGBT Youth Scotland promoting ‘trans ideology’ in primary schools, Chapman said the Tory MSP’s complaint was ‘categorically more of a risk to children’.
Chapman was born in what is now Harare, Zimbabwe. It’s some achievement to be the most ludicrous politician your country has produced when the competition is Robert Mugabe.
The equalities committee ought to ditch its deputy convenor in favour of someone less prone to throwing tantrums when a court won’t give them their own way. A committee that keeps Chapman on as deputy convenor is either saying it agrees with her or that it can’t find someone capable of replacing her. I’m honestly not sure which is worse.
Whatever faith I had in Holyrood’s ability to drag itself out of the mire and become a parliament Scotland could respect has long since depleted. But MSPs owe it to the people who send them there to at least try to improve the quality and the dignity of the institution. Standing up for the independence of the judiciary should not be a daunting task for parliamentarians who care about the rule of law.
I doubt any Supreme Court justice had heard of Maggie Chapman before this row erupted. Judges are not the audience MSPs are being asked to consider. When they come to vote on Chapman’s future, it is the Scottish public who will be watching and hoping their representatives do something right for once.
Published: 27 April 2025
The crass stupidity of both votes policy advocated by the SNP
2021 Scottish General Election Results
SNP: Constituency votes 1,291,204 47.7% 62 MSPs
SNP: List votes: 1,094,374 40.3% 2 MSPs (Down 2 MSPs)
Note: votes required to gain a list seat: approx 500,000
Greens: Constituency votes 34,990 8% 0 MSPs
Greens: List votes: 220,000 8% 8 MSPs
Note: votes required to gain a list seat: approx 25,000
Positive use of the second vote
List votes should be diverted away from the SNP and given to other Scottish Independence candidates. This would ensure a majority of independence supporting MSPs.
caltonjock 