Scotland’s Ministry of Fantastical Thinking

FANTASTICAL THINKING SEEMS TO BE ALL THE RAGE these days among those on the progressive left. Take Jason Arday, the Cambridge professor, who died recently.

This is a human tragedy because, whatever the circumstances, a young man is gone, and a family is left grieving. Arday had been celebrated as Cambridge’s youngest Black professor, only for serious questions later to emerge about plagiarism in his academic work and elements of his personal story that had been so widely promoted.

The intense public scrutiny that followed was clearly unbearable, and cases like this should give us pause. When institutions prioritise identity-driven narratives and the cult of victimhood over rigorous standards, they can place individuals under extraordinary pressure and ultimately harm the very people those policies claim to uplift.

So, it came as little surprise to learn that Timothy Westwood, a recent convener of the scandal-hit charity LGBT Youth Scotland (LGBTYS), was another practitioner of the same art. The 25-year-old presented himself as a high-flying portfolio director, lawyer and adviser with senior roles at the British Red Cross, Mind and Amnesty International. The organisations contradicted these claims. He had used a computer-manipulated profile picture (above) and styled himself “Rt Hon Lord Barony Timothy Guy Westwood” without any right to the title. A company filing from his late teens even tried to formalise the peerage before Companies House rejected it. Westwood resigned.

The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator looked into the matter and cleared LGBTYS of wrongdoing. Of course it did.

LGBTYS has received more than £13 million from public sources since 2015, including substantial sums directly from the Scottish Government. It is no stranger to scandal. Its former chief executive, James Rennie, was a ringleader of one of Scotland’s most notorious paedophile rings. In 2009 he was convicted of multiple offences, including the prolonged sexual abuse of a baby he had been trusted to babysit from the age of three months. He used computers at the charity’s offices while doing so.

Another man linked to the organisation’s materials, Andrew Easton, was later convicted of distributing indecent images of children, including newborns. There have been further allegations of grooming by staff.

This is the same group that has described puberty blockers as “wonderful”, whose materials and influence have helped shape trans guidance used in Scottish nurseries and primary schools, and which continues to advocate an affirmative approach for gender-confused children. I’ll leave readers to ponder the wisdom of placing such an organisation at the heart of policy affecting the most vulnerable.

no amount of public money poured into activist charities will turn fantasy into fact

Perhaps the Scottish Government should simply go the whole hog and create a Ministry of Fantastical Thinking, complete with an equally fantastical budget. After all, ministers remain wedded to an ideology that insists a man can declare himself a woman and, with a wave of the bureaucratic wand, magically become one for the purposes of law, sport, prisons and single-sex spaces – despite the Supreme Court ruling that sex is biological.

The Ministry could cheerfully fund a “Queer Milk” group to train biological men in the art of “chestfeeding” babies. Oh wait – that already exists.

LGBT Health and Wellbeing, another recipient of hundreds of thousands of pounds from the Scottish Government, NHS boards and councils, runs weekly “Queer Milk” sessions in Edinburgh for those “breastfeeding, chestfeeding or giving human milk to their baby in any amount … no matter what your feeding journey looks like.” The terminology leaves little doubt that biological males identifying as women are welcome. Critics, including women’s groups, have called the practice grotesque and raised serious safeguarding questions about the substance produced under hormone regimes. The Government insists its Equality and Human Rights Fund money is not specifically for lactation services. How reassuring.

Or it could bankroll yet more “inclusive education” outfits that embed contested gender ideology in classrooms from the earliest years. Time for Inclusive Education and similar groups have received significant public funding to do precisely that, helping ensure that children encounter the idea that sex is a spectrum and identity is self-declared long before they can possibly understand the long-term consequences.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Reality – where men are men, women are women, and rape is not a spectrum – Reform will continue to defend the hard-won rights of women and girls and protect children from experimental medical pathways and ideological capture. Biological sex is not a feeling. Safeguarding is not bigotry. And no amount of public money poured into activist charities will turn fantasy into fact.

The Scottish Government’s addiction to gender ideology has already cost taxpayers tens of millions, damaged women’s rights and placed vulnerable children in the path of unproven interventions. Clearing a charity after its latest fantasist resigned does not erase the pattern. It merely illustrates how deep the denial runs.