EC0-ZEALOTS TURN FROM LAP-DOGS TO KING-MAKERS
THE Scottish Greens have long been facilitators of the SNP at Holyrood, helping to rescue unpopular policies – and save the necks of failing Nationalist ministers. They were at Alex Salmond’s disposal when he ran a minority government, though he despised co-leader Patrick Harvie and hated asking for his support.
Nicola Sturgeon had no such qualms and depended on the Greens for tax hikes – and for voting to keep John Swinney in his job after a string of appalling failures.
Now the cohort of eight Green MSPs, a record number, are centre-stage once again, vowing to back the SNP’s plans to forge ahead with a second independence referendum.
Nominally environmentalists, they are also devoted separatists, even though more than half of their voters are opposed to tearing Scotland out of the UK.
And they occupy this position of power despite none of them having secured a constituency seat – instead they won purely on list votes.
In the new parliament, these willing enablers of SNP policy will start out in their previous lap-dog role, though there is also speculation about a coalition.
Yesterday Nicola Sturgeon said: ‘I’m certainly open to discussions with the Greens about whether there is a relationship that is more formal than the one we had in the last parliament.’
Any such deal would give a once marginal and widely ridiculed outfit a position of influence beyond its own wildest dreams, transforming a rabble of self-styled ecowarriors into king-makers.
A glance through the Greens’ wish-list manifesto shows an array of proposals from auditing public monuments for signs of racism to the decriminalisation of prostitution and, predictably, an escalation of softtouch justice.
Children would not start school until the age of seven, and end-of-term exams would be scrapped.
AND there’s ominous talk of a commitment to ‘fairer taxes’ – which should worry anyone who works for a living, given the Greens’ track record on helping the SNP to set up its punitive regime.
With the Greens’ back-up in the last parliament, middle-class families were hit by a new £55million tax bombshell.
The Greens say they are committed to ‘progressive’ taxation, and their main ambition is a ‘tax on all wealth and assets above the £1million threshold, including property, land, pensions and other assets’.
There’s also a Marxist flavour to some of their proposals – in agriculture the Greens aim to review land inheritance laws to prevent automatic succession.
The party will encourage more community land buyouts, ensuring that communities are not forced to pay market values for land to ‘wealthy landowners’. It’s easy to see why the Greens were memorably branded ‘lentil-munching, sandal-wearing watermelons’ by Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser – green on the outside but red on the inside.
Their manifesto also contains a plan to ‘deliver long overdue reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, including statutory self-declaration, recognising nonbinary identities and all genders, and providing access to health care for trans minors with parental or guardian consent’.
This is a contentious issue which has split the SNP.
And there is likely to be more conflict between the SNP and its possible coalition partners – over oil and gas.
The Greens want to see an extra 200 onshore turbines built every year, while forcing the North Sea oil industry to leave nearly six billion barrels untapped in existing oil fields.
Turning its back completely on a sector that supports around 100,000 jobs would be an extremely risky, and possibly fatal, move for the SNP.
The Greens would also stop building roads, introduce 20mph speed limits for towns and cities, and impose swingeing parking and congestion charges. But for all their credentials as a new kind of political party, progressive and outward-looking, there is a streak of radicalism – and the environment doesn’t always appear to be the group’s top priority.
Co-leader Lorna Slater, a Canadian renewables engineer, campaigned for independence in 2014.
ROSS Greer, who joined the Greens aged 15 and became Scotland’s youngest-ever MSP in 2016, tweeted after the election result that ‘there is now a clear parliamentary majority in favour of an independence referendum’.
Immediately after his election in 2016, Mr Greer was at the centre of a row over his public support of Palestinian terror group Hamas after he rather unedifyingly boasted that he had ‘wound up the Zionist lobby’.
Mr Harvie, a former youth worker, was a vocal supporter of the SNP’s now-defunct Named Person scheme – branded ‘Orwellian’ by its critics.
Now there’s a possibility that some of these radicals could become ministers in the Scottish Cabinet.
But perhaps the Greens should tread wary – as the Lib Dems, with only four seats, have found to their cost, junior partners in coalitions tend to suffer the consequences once they’re out of office.
The Greens’ quest for relevance after years of being regarded as little more than a bad joke has paid off – but it might also pave the way for their eventual downfall.