Scottish Greens chiefs will stay in post

Scottish Greens chiefs Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater have successfully fended off a threat to their leadership.

The two Holyrood ministers – who took their party into a power-sharing agreement with the SNP – were backed to continue by 65% of those who voted.

We exclusively revealed in August some party activists wanted to introduce new rules which would bar Greens in government from holding the party leadership.

Mr Harvie and Ms Slater were given posts in Nicola Sturgeon’s administration last August after striking a deal with her party.

But a party source said some Green activists felt the party’s leaders had been “silenced” over key issues such as rent freeze proposals due to working with the SNP.

The activist had said: “We scrapped our support for an energy company in Scotland and now our voice seems to have gone pretty silent on that issue.

“I think there is a general concern that we aren’t talking about the cost-of-living crisis anywhere near as vociferously as we could be if our leaders were perhaps not ministers.”

However, only 26% of members who voted for the proposals backed permanently separating the party leadership from government posts.

The Scottish Greens said the result showed the pair had strong backing from the party’s membership.

Had the proposals passed, they would have been forced to stand down at their party’s next general meeting.

They would have also been barred from holding any “major officer position” while they remained in their ministerial roles.