Nothing in life or politics lasts forever, not even Nicola Sturgeon’s legendary popularity: 42 per cent of Scots now want the First Minister to step down immediately, according to the latest Panelbase poll. Is the road running out for Sturgeon?

The SNP leader’s supporters insist that Rishi Sunak would be lucky to have the First Minister’s poll ratings. They’re not wrong – and the SNP still dominates Scottish politics. But every dog in the street, as they say here, knows that Sturgeon’s time is coming to an end.

Sturgeon’s policy of gender self-declaration if, of course, the proximate cause of the First Minister’s misfortune. The incarceration of a double rapist, Isla Bryson, in a women’s prison, has turned into a moral and political Chernobyl. The more Sturgeon tries to tamp it down, the worse the fallout. Every press conference is dominated by the question: is Bryson a man or a woman?

Sturgeon still refuses to say – even though she ordered the Scottish Prison Service to send ‘the individual’, as she describes him, to a male jail. The reason is that affirming his biological sex might undermine her Gender Recognition Reform Bill. This legislation would give Adam Graham – to use Bryson’s ‘dead name’ – a legally-enforceable gender recognition certificate on demand, making him legally a woman.

Want to see more SNP fails? – Health Matters