John Swinney faces a pre-election nightmare after a renegade former SNP MP vowed to lift the lid on how the SNP became in thrall to the transgender lobby. Joanna Cherry will release her memoir on April 26, less than a fortnight before Scotland goes to the polls.
She will also accuse the SNP of effectively ditching its independence fight under Ms Sturgeon. Plugging the book, which is called ‘Keeping the Dream Alive’, Ms Cherry took to social media site X where she said it would be a “must if you want to know the truth about the SNP’s embrace of gender identity politics and their failure to pursue Indy”.
Ms Sturgeon became a hate figure to women’s rights campaigners for her insistence that biological men could ‘become’ women. She famously refused to say whether she believed double rapist Isla Bryson was a man or a woman.
Ms Cherry was elected as an MP in 2015 for Edinburgh South West and was returned at the elections of 2017 and 2019. She acted as the SNP’s justice and home affairs spokeswoman at Westminster until 2021 when she was sacked from her role.
She has always insisted it was due to her views on gender, but the party claimed it was because of “unacceptable behaviour”. She is friends with JK Rowling and a firm supporter of campaign group For Women Scotland.
She lost her seat at the 2024 general election. She blamed Nicola Sturgeon for her defeat, saying: “I’m not ashamed because it’s not down to me, but I am afraid to say and ashamed for my party, that both our reputation of governing competently and for integrity has taken a severe battering in the last couple of years.”