Murray Blackburn Mackenzie claim to be policy analysts. Their twitter and website have a reassuring air: a picture of the Forth Rail Bridge in sunshine, a logo of three grey wavy lines to look serious. They could be a long-established firm of Edinburgh solicitors, though few solicitors would have a request for donations on their front page, or endorsements from four notorious anti-trans campaigning politicians.
They are generally referred to as policy analysts, for example by The Guardian. Note the headline: âScotlandâs gender recognition reform is a ârecipe for bad lawâ, say campaignersâ, though the article itself says Rape Crisis Scotland and Amnesty, and every party but the Conservatives, support the proposals. Who is against? One of these âpolicy analystsâ, tiny hate group Four women Scotland, and LGB All Liars.
So, why bother reporting what they say? Is a tiny hate groupâs opposition to gender recognition reform overwhelmingly supported by Scottish civil society actually newsworthy? The Herald is a model of reporting, quoting at length supporters of the law as befits their importance, but still quoted MBM, calling them âa policy think tankâ. The Scotsman calls them a âpolicy groupâ, and had a silly piece quoting one of them at length after she resigned from the Royal College of Nursing. The RCN had investigated her for a potential breach of contract. Reporting on the gender recognition consultation, The Times quoted the Catholic Church, the Church of Scotland, and âthe policy analystâ MBM.
What do they tweet about? Their pinned tweet is about gender recognition reform. All their 54 tweets in May are too. One of them is Kath Murray, a criminologist. Her pinned tweet is about ârecording sex accuratelyâ (No Transwomen!) and again her tweets are overwhelmingly attacking trans rights.
Do they blog about anything other than trans? In 2021 they did an article about whether the Green Party, now it is in coalition with the SNP, would retain opposition party privileges. So I did a quick google. It doesnât. In 2020, they did a three page submission on the Lobbying Act. And, thatâs it. By contrast, they have eighteen posts this year so far on gender recognition, scaremongering and making unsubstantiated allegations of harm.
Everything else is an attack on trans rights. Under âeducationâ, there are three articles, all about trans rights. One makes the shocking allegation that âno university in Scotland has any form of organised representation or networking for female staffâ, but read closely, it reveals that it means all the womenâs groups may include trans women. It then goes on about anti-trans campaigners as if they were victims.
There is a great deal on their site about data collection. All of it is advocating trans exclusion. For example, they are desperate that trans women should be told to tell the census that we are men, even though the Court of Session disagrees. They make a number of unsubstantiated claims that trans women being allowed to say we are women is âharmfulâ to accurate statistics, though the proportion of the population who is trans is under 1%, and trans men and trans women will cancel each other out.
All of their work on criminal justice and policing is about trans: for example, they do not want hate crime law around misogyny, but around the characteristic of sex, which they define to exclude trans women from the category âwomenâ.
Who are they, anyway? Two former civil servants and a research fellow. Just as anyone can set up a wordpress blog, it seems anyone can call themselves âpolicy analystsâ or consultants, get to make scaremongering, unsubstantiated claims to parliamentary committees, and have their words reported unquestioningly by the press, as if what they said matters. It only matters because the press decides it does. So MBMâs message of hate and exclusion spreads.