Yousaf did the nation a service in ditching the zealot Greens
Social media piled on the pain as soon as the Greens were summarily ditched by Humza Yousaf last week.
Online commentators used AI to transform Patrick Harvie’s furious MSPs into cartoon Muppets – aided by the ridiculous real-life spectacle of that petulant press conference in front of Holyrood’s coffee bar.
The thwarted politicians vented their hurt feelings before the parliamentary press pack – and anyone else on their way to buy a breakfast latte.
A friend could have told them the best course of action for the dumpee when a relationship ends badly is not to over-share. But the undignified Greens don’t have any friends left.
Every policy that generated negative headlines for Yousaf’s government can be traced back to his (now ex) ministers, Harvie and Lorna Slater. They upset fishermen by pushing no-catch zones across Scotland’s fragile rural communities, threatened small business with a botched bottle recycling scheme, angered home owners with draconian restrictions on gas boilers and put the fear into just about everyone whose jobs depend on oil and gas.
Large numbers of women were aghast at a law to allow any man, including rapists and sexual fetishists, to identify as female.
The SNP’s success from 2007 to 2014 was built on a broad network of support across Scotland. The Greens blew that consensus apart. It all seemed very different when Nicola Sturgeon brought them into government in 2021. The deal allowed her to promote her government’s environmental credentials as the world’s media and political leaders gathered in Glasgow to discuss the climate crisis at COP26. But the Green Party long ago stopped being cuddly environmentalists. The party has become a welcome space for ideas once confined to the ultra-left fringe of politics.
The Greens oppose economic growth, which means they oppose the creation of jobs and improvements in living standards. Some of their MSPs would allow children as young as eight to change their legal sex. Harvie disgraced himself by rubbishing Dr Hilary Cass’s four-year review of the care of genderconfused children.
The Scottish Greens’ powerful LGBTQ wing attacked doctors for stopping the prescription of puberty blocker drugs to these children on safety grounds.
As well as the unsafe medicalisation of children, the Greens back the legalisation, indeed the promotion, of prostitution as a career option.
But the scariest aspect of their approach to politics is their lack of compromise. They know they are right and know what’s right for you and I. It’s a totalitarian mindset which is dangerous if it gets a taste of power.
Humza Yousaf may be reeling from the backlash following their break-up. But he performed a vital national service in dispatching these self-pitying zealots.