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The resolution, which came not from the leadership, but by Holyrood backbenchers Emma Harper and Christine Grahame, has been postponed until the SNP’s spring conference next year, where it will come back rewritten. That’s still one of the big questions over independence that the SNP is currently working on answering. Wishing a hard border didn’t exist, isn’t the same as a hard border not existing. Had it, it would almost certainly have been sent back to the drawing board. Though it appeared on the draft, it never made it to the final agenda. There was some debate ahead of the gathering over a call for a frictionless border between an independent Scotland and England. The motions in the final agenda were mostly uncontroversial. That’s not to say Nicola Sturgeon can expect an easy ride from her new council, but it may be a lot less rough. “I suspect the Alba defections have stopped the elections being particularly interesting,” one SNP source told Holyrood. Those factions, lists and slates no longer exist. The internal elections saw huge victories for the critics, with more than 20 activists, councillors and MPs critical of Sturgeon’s leadership elected.

In the other, you had the loyalists who dubbed the critical groups as factions, “parties within parties” giving outsiders undue influence. The so-called, self monikered “good guys”. In the one corner, you had those critical of Nicola Sturgeon and the leadership over the pace of indyref2, the planned reforms of the Gender Recognition Act, and the secretive, closed rank management of the party. Last year’s conference was dominated by factionalism in a way that hadn’t been seen in the modern party.

Many of the more prominent SNP activists who were sympathetic to Cherry, and who were unhappy with some aspects of the Scottish Government’s planned reforms of gender recogniton laws, are simply no longer in the SNP. What was different about this pre-conference row, this public airing of SNP tensions over trans issues, is that it was a lot less even. That led to the incredible scenario of Cherry, an SNP MP writing to Shona Robison, an SNP minister in Holyrood, asking the government to probe the organisation that receives most of its funding from the taxpayer. “Conversion therapy is harmful and wrong whether it’s trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or their gender identity.” The Equality Network then shared a picture of Cherry’s tweet, with the comment, “Apparently, ‘We must not make it a criminal offence for therapists to try to help lesbian & gay patients to feel comfortable in a mixed sex relationship.’ Kirsty Blackman, the SNP MP for Aberdeen North, tweeted that she had complained about Cherry “through the proper channels, repeatedly, for years” and yet it had “resulted in nothing happening and these views still being expressed – and still causing harm to so many people.” The SNP’s youth and LGBTI wings called for the MP to be kicked out of the party, claiming she was supporting conversion therapy. She then followed it up with another: “And re conversion therapy which any right thinking person should oppose we must not make it a criminal offence for therapists to try to help patients with gender dysphoria to feel comfortable in their birth sex. All policy makers should hear the range of opinions on the debate around gender identity.” Taking to social media, the QC shared an article from The Times about Stonewall’s influence on UK government policy around trans issues and conversion therapy.Ĭherry tweeted: “It’s very concerning that the PM is only getting the view of Stonewall on the clash between sex-based rights & those based on gender identity. The MP for Edinburgh South West infuriated some of her Westminster colleagues, and two of the party’s influential affiliated groups, with a tweet earlier this month. Once again, the SNP’s conference risked being overshadowed by a row over gender, sex and Joanna Cherry. Slate wiped clean: SNP's 87th annual conference could be its most collegiate in years