Material - great post. Especially your point here:
And I’m sure the UK, because of it’s small size and the speed with which a centralized parliamentary national government can pass legislation (compared to the decentralized non-parliamentary US form) must have seemed, from the outside, like an easy win
Makes sense that Scotland and Ireland were picked off first then
Girl Guides makes more sense in this wider context - someone on twitter made point that for a charity of its size it has an unusual degree of inexperienced (as in not trustees elsewhere) trustees, the majority of whom were recruited fairly recently after an overhaul. Also relevant is the govt announcement that it would fund 5500 places for disadvantaged children at guides/ scouts etc
Also Julie Bindel who tweeted recently that she's met Stonewall CEO Ruth Hunt before she interviewed for the post and discussed what her take was going to be on the trans issue. Then her opinion then was that Stonewall should help the 'T' set up its own organisation. This was echoed by another journalist.