Do claims of a culture war in the UK stand up to scrutiny?

Of course I know that those aged 16 and 17 can vote in Scottish Parliament elections (and those for the Welsh Assembly) while the General Election franchise is 18-plus, but I was unaware that under-18s could not get married in England.

Technically they still can, as the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022 is not due to come into effect until next month. But once that happens, marriage under 18 will be illegal in England or Wales, while in Scotland the law will remain the same.

Currently, in England and Wales those aged 16 or 17 need the consent of either their parents or a court to get married, whereas famously there is no such restriction in Scotland.

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Gretna Green markets its historic Gretna Hall as “the runaway destination of choice for rich and famous of centuries gone by”, and understandably trades on the “romantic history” of the destination, but notions of romance are entirely incompatible with the policy debate around child marriage.

It feels controversial to refer to it as such, given the Scottish Parliament is not currently considering any legislative change in this area.

Indeed, the fact that young Scots can marry at 16, as well as vote or join the army, has been cited by many politicians as justification for widening access to gender recognition – the topic Sarwar was discussing when he cited examples of policy variance. In these discussions Scotland’s legal marriage age is simply accepted as a fact, rather than a source of any potential problems.

Girls Not Brides UK wrote to then-prime minister Boris Johnson (above) in May 2021 arguing that existing laws against forced marriage were insufficient to protect teenagers because “unacceptably the onus is on the child to secure their own protection under forced marriage law by speaking out against their own family and community, which can have dangerous consequences”.

Among those leading the campaign was Payzee Mahmod, who at 16 was forced to marry a man twice her age and endured rape and forced pregnancy. Her sister Banaz was married at 17, left her husband three years later, and was then murdered in a so-called “honour killing” arranged by relatives.

In June 2021, Sajid Javid introduced a private member’s bill seeking to raise the minimum age for marriage to 18, and it was reported that he would challenge Nicola Sturgeon to follow suit. If he did, the challenge does not seem to have been very loud or forceful, and next month the gulf will further widen between marriage policies on either side of the Border.

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The use of Section 35 of the Scotland Act to block the Gender Recognition Reform Bill has led some to suggest that the UK Government simply will not tolerate Scotland having different approaches to what The Herald’s David Leask calls “hot-button issues”, and/or that it has stoked a “culture war” in the guise of protecting the rights of women and children.

While politicians and journalists alike parrot that the ambiguously defined “trans community” is the most vulnerable and marginalised group of people in the UK, child brides might beg to differ. If the UK Government wanted to show up Scotland as lagging behind in terms of progressive politics, it might have tried to drag us into line on marriage. Perhaps that would have been less of a war, more of a walkover, and therefore of less value politically.

Would “child marriage rights” activists have emerged to lobby MSPs, citing the fact that 16-year-olds can vote and join the army as part of their agenda? Stranger things have happened (and surely some must endorse the current law) but Scotland may have just followed England’s lead. Incidentally, a plank of the argument for letting under-18s change legal sex would then have fallen away.

Let’s not give the UK Government more credit than it deserves by assuming it has a coherent strategy on anything, or even that it was paying proper attention over the past six years to what the GRR Bill would actually do. It’s debatable whether the onus was on Westminster to flag concerns about it to Holyrood – especially given those exact concerns were already being raised and ignored within this country – but was this cock-up or conspiracy, and does it even matter now?

Some, of course, believe it is the Scottish Government that has deliberately contrived this stand-off – a claim that is also far-fetched.

The strategists here were those who lobbied for gender recognition change, targeting tricky terrain such as prison policies first in order to break down barriers of resistance, and worked to demonise women who actually understood the legislation. The person who achieved the first part bowed out of public life some years ago, and since then the demonisers have grown in number and confidence, bolstered by gushing support from our MSPs.

Politicians arguing about metaphorical wars will be of little use if the incitement to violence against women that is currently simmering boils over into action.