JK Rowling has reignited her feud with Nicola Sturgeon – and blamed her for the SNP’s handling of the NHS Fife trans row.
The Harry Potter author said the Scottish Government’s continued defence of the ‘hapless, unprofessional, ideologically captured health board’ was the former First Minister’s ‘legacy’.
First Minister John Swinney and Health Secretary Neil Gray both insist they have confidence in NHS Fife despite criticism over its behaviour during the Sandie Peggie tribunal.
Mrs Peggie, 51, was suspended after she refused to get changed alongside a male-born doctor.
Yesterday, Ms Rowling said: ‘Nicola Sturgeon’s legacy: a government that publicly backs the hapless, unprofessional, ideologically captured health board that’s persecuting a nurse for asserting her legal right to a single-sex changing room.’
It is the latest broadside levelled at the former First Minister by the multi-millionaire children’s author, who has a net worth of £945 million.
In 2022, Ms Rowling wore a T-shirt which branded Ms Sturgeon a ‘destroyer of women’s rights’ in protest against the Scottish Government’s gender recognition reform laws, which were later blocked by the UK Government.
The move prompted Ms Sturgeon to call for those with strong views to ‘treat each other with respect’.
She said: ‘I have always thought that on this issue, where people have very strong views, we should all try to treat each other with respect and that is what I will continue to do.’
The row escalated after a landmark Supreme Court ruling in April, which clarified that a woman is biologically female for the purposes of equalities laws, when Ms Rowling compared Ms Sturgeon to Pontius Pilate, who ordered Jesus’ crucifixtion.
After Ms Sturgeon refused to comment on the ruling, Ms Rowling mocked her silence by sharing a social media selfie of the Glasgow MSP in the gym on Easter Monday calling her ‘Pontius Pilates’.
In the Bible, Pontius Pilate did not believe that Jesus had committed a crime but condemned him to death because the crowd called for it.
And last month, after Ms Sturgeon chaired a discussion about the witch trials in Scotland, Ms Rowling hit out at her adversary again.
She said: ‘If Sturgeon had been around in the 1500s she’d have been right there lighting the pyres.
‘Ungodly women like this not only blight the crops and turn the milk, they almost certainly put a spell on my husband which made him pilfer all the tithes.’
The author has consistently stuck up for women’s rights in recent years – and has even pledged to personally fund gender-critical legal actions.
The ‘fighting fund’ is helping women who have lost their livelihoods or are facing employment tribunals because of their views on sex-based rights.
The criteria covers those who ‘don’t have adequate means to bring actions to court or to defend themselves’.
It was publicly announced in May after prisoner Jane Sutherley said she was considering suing the Scottish Prison Service after she was forced to share facilities with transgender women.