Hey Scotland, don’t be England’s b!tch!

How England’s toxic culture of bigotry fuels the Case for Scottish Independence

I Protect the Dolls

To “protect the dolls” means to protect the most vulnerable: trans women, the queer, the marginalised. It means standing against a colonial logic that always needs someone to punish. England’s toxic legacy of bigotry is its new global export. Bigotry is not a bug in the British system, it is a core feature. If there was ever a case for devolution, this is it—to remain is to endorse a culture of hateful ‘othering’ whose echoes in colonial history still haunt us.

Today, we see the navel-gazing anguish of Britons for the loss of empire, and the growing sense of national fragility. That lament is born not from grief but from entitlement—a collective narcissism that insists “normal” must mean white, Christian, and patriarchal. As that entitlement loses its global grip, it turns inward—on the diversity of its own people.

“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” – Gandhi. Gandhi’s philosophy was to expose the hypocrisy of British rule and to champion civil disobedience. It takes a nation to be a nation—to build one. Civil disobedience is the only true form of resistance when your rights are denied. And if all “others” want equality—women, the elderly, the disabled, the queer, the gender divergent—then civil disobedience is the only path.

Scotland, in its Gender Recognition Reform Act, chose to be better than that. Now, its sovereignty has been attacked by a sister nation which has had its hands around Scotland’s throat for centuries. This time, the motivation is bigotry and power—pure and simple.

It is no coincidence that one of the not-so-secret motivations behind Brexit was to undermine the authority of the European Court of Human Rights.⁷ While full withdrawal hasn’t yet occurred, the drive to circumvent or dilute EHCR protections was a central Tory objective—an objective utterly at odds with the Scottish commitment to international human rights frameworks. This drive to abandon the ECHR reflects a deeper English rebellion against perceived losses of sovereignty—one that is less about legal detail and more about imperial instinct. The idea that international law should have any binding authority over Britain is intolerable to those still dressed in the psychic garb of empire. Seen in this light, the assault by the UK Supreme Court against Scottish sovereignty and the Gender Recognition Reform Act reveals the bigoted motivation which sits behind it. And now, those protections are exactly what England seeks to unravel.

II. Empire Begets Entitlement

Ever since the First World War, Britain—mainly England—has lamented the loss of empire. But to believe it was wronged by that loss is to wear the clothes of the oppressor. To turn the gunsights on trans people or any marginalised group is to don the same fabric: one stitched from entitlement.

If the manufacture of this mindset were an industry, the UK would be having a Second Industrial Revolution. Instead, it’s basking in the false glamour of being the philosopher-in-chief for bigots posing as defenders of middle-class values.

This is nothing new; only the context has changed.

Colonial conquest required contempt—for bodies, for cultures, for economies. Economist Utsa Patnaik estimates Britain extracted $45 trillion from India during colonial rule. India’s share of the global economy dropped from 23% to under 4%. In China, Britain fought wars to keep selling opium. When theft wouldn’t suffice, narcotics and naval bombardment stepped in.⁵

Britain didn’t just loot nations. It invented scalable extraction. Empire was a business model that generated a psyche of superiority—just another flavour of fascism—and that psyche persists today.

The so-called “Commonwealth” is the institutional face of this ongoing imperial hangover. It presents itself as a benevolent club of equals, but it’s little more than a colonial aftercare package—a nostalgic gentleman’s club for countries once looted, occupied, or otherwise inconvenienced by British ambition. They meet periodically to celebrate shared values like cricket, English-language bureaucracy, and the lingering trauma of colonisation.

Membership is free. But it comes with the priceless honour of having once been colonised. “Common Wealth”? No. An all-you-can-eat buffet with seating for Britain only. This enduring structure gives cover to Britain’s enduring entitlement and its ability to reframe historical dominance as cultural stewardship. The Commonwealth is not history—it’s infrastructure for soft power and cultural control.⁶

Maybe we need a new word for Stockholm Syndrome: the Commonwealth Syndrome, where you get serve at the table where your rapist sits. That’s colonialism dressed up in the respectability of a gentleman’s club.

III. The New Colonialism: Gender Policing

England’s real legacy isn’t diplomacy or civility. It’s exploitation and control. And in its twilight years, when it can no longer conquer land, it conquers discourse—targeting women’s bodies, gender identity, and trans existence with the same colonial zeal. It’s national mansplaining, wrapped in sharp tailoring.

The English language itself has been a tool of cultural erasure—from Wales and Scotland to Australia, Canada, and Nigeria. UNESCO reports that nearly 40% of the world’s 7,000 languages are endangered, primarily due to colonial suppression and English dominance. Over 100 Indigenous Australian languages have been lost since British colonisation.⁴

To romanticise Britain’s imperial past is to be nostalgic for its cultural violence. The same mindset that justified slavery now justifies censorship.

IV. Toplessness, Censorship, and Civil Disobedience

Last week in Scotland, trans women protested topless in response to ongoing legislative attacks on gender identity. They did it because toplessness in a male-coded body is tolerated. In a female one, it is criminalised.

The media blurred out their breasts—exposing the lie that trans women aren’t women. If they weren’t, what was there to censor?²

This logic is not neutral. It’s a form of colonial body-shaming rooted in purity culture—a distinctly British export. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill, democratically passed by Scotland, was blocked by the UK Government. The protest, the censorship, and the crackdown all exist on the same spectrum: a refusal to let women, especially trans women, define themselves. A refusal to yield sovereignty—of body and of nation.

This is the cultural logic of British bigotry: shame the body, censor the feminine, punish autonomy.³

V. The Illusion of the United Kingdom

Scotland, don’t be another bitch. Stand up. Act out. Be your own woman.

And while you’re at it, explain to me why the United Kingdom is considered a country when it is made up of four constituent countries. That’s not unity—that’s hostage politics. A nation of nations where one does the talking, and the rest are told to listen.

Endnotes

1. Under Scottish law, there is no statute that explicitly criminalises female toplessness per se. However, women who go topless in public are far more likely to be arrested or charged under common law public indecency or under section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010, which criminalises behaviour likely to cause ‘fear or alarm.’ In practice, these laws are disproportionately enforced against female-presenting bodies, including trans women. See: Scottish Law Commission, 2021, and cases highlighted by Scottish Legal News.
2. For analysis of media censorship and its implications on gender identity recognition, see: Whittle, S. (2022). “Media and the Trans Body: Censorship, Spectacle and Shame.” Journal of Gender and Law, 14(2), pp. 211-226.
3. The disparity in policing of public nudity reflects entrenched gender biases in law enforcement. See: “Nudity and the Law: Historical Roots and Modern Enforcement” in British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 61, Issue 3, 2021.
4. UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (2024). Over 3,000 of the world’s languages are endangered, primarily due to colonial legacies, displacement, and state policies of assimilation. Specific regional losses are detailed in their ongoing “Living Tongues” report.
5. Utsa Patnaik, “Revisiting the drain, or transfer from India to Britain in the context of global diffusion of capitalism,” 2018. Her estimates place the economic extraction by Britain at $45 trillion USD adjusted for inflation. See also: Maddison Historical Statistics and the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London.
6. See: Murphy, C. (2020). “The Commonwealth and Post-Imperial Nostalgia.” International Affairs, 96(4), pp. 921–938. Also: Balakrishnan, G. (2019). “Empire’s Echo: Britain’s Cultural Projection through the Commonwealth.”
7. See: Wintemute, R. (2019). “The Brexit Threat to Human Rights Protections in the UK.” King’s Law Journal, 30(1), pp. 1–17. The EHCR, while often confused with the EU, remains a separate instrument—but Brexit discussions revealed an appetite in England’s political elite for sidelining both. Scotland, in contrast, has reiterated its commitment to these frameworks.