From next month in Scotland you’ll be able to drop into a sex shop, make an anonymous accusation of hate crime against someone you dislike and potentially see your bete noir locked up. You think I’m joking – that this is an April Fool come early. I only wish it was. In two weeks’ time, this will be the law of the land in Scotland under the SNP’s iniquitous Hate Crime Act which makes ‘stirring up hatred’ a criminal offence punishable by 7 years in jail.

The sex shop in question is an LGBTQ-friendly establishment in Glasgow’s Merchant City. It is a ‘third-party reporting centre’ set up by Police Scotland to make it easier to accuse someone of hate crime. There will be 411 of these snitching centres across Scotland located everywhere from mushroom farms to caravan sites. Trans activists across the land will be able to accuse JK Rowling, 24/7, of being a transphobe.

Scotland will be a country where Twitter spats matter more than burglaries

The trans campaigner India Willoughby has already tried to have the novelist prosecuted for misgendering him/her. After the complaint was dismissed by Northumberland Police, Willoughby’s supporters made clear they will be accusing her in Scotland. They might even succeed.

The Scottish government’s definition of ‘stirring up hatred’ is so vague that ministers have given up trying to explain it. They just refer you to the Police Scotland website where a hate crime is defined as ‘any crime which is understood by the victim or any other person as being motivated, wholly or partly by malice or ill will towards a social group’.

What on earth does that mean? It does not mean harassment or threatening behaviour, which is already illegal. The purpose is clearly to criminalise speech which some minority groups find offensive or abusive. It gives carte blanche to anyone who feels they have been misgendered, ridiculed, or that their religion has been disrespected, to leap to their nearest reporting centre to ventilate their hurt feelings. As