Can the Green Surge come to Scotland?
Sunday National, 26 October 2025
Gerry Hassan
Zack Polanski’s recent election as leader of the Greens in England and Wales was a major moment in UK politics. It has acted as a lightning bolt, offering hope to many who want to see the existing Westminster consensus and rightward drift of UK politics reversed.
Green membership in England and Wales has exploded; in the past week it has surpassed the entire UK membership of the once powerful Tories. Several polls have shown the Greens not only rising across the UK but closing in on Labour, with one poll putting them narrowly ahead of Starmer’s struggling party.
None of this is hard to fathom. But does it have lessons for Scotland where the Greens have had a presence in the Scottish Parliament since 1999? And could the Greens here build on what they have already done, and even more effectively challenge the safety-first centrism and conservatism which shapes too much of our politics?
In this it is important to recognise the achievements of the Scottish Greens. Becoming a permanent fixture on the political landscape cannot be underestimated. No one else has managed it beyond the mainstream parties over the past quarter century – not the Scottish Socialists who rose then imploded; nor any of Farage’s serial parties yet, while Alba have never even secured a foothold.
Green Success in Scotland
The Greens are a significant force, having won 8.1% of the regional vote in the 2021 Holyrood elections and securing eight seats – their highest ever. They have had an impact, been noticed and ruffled feathers. They have influenced government and legislation, being associated with championing such issues as rent controls. Moreover, their prospects for next year’s election are rosy, with polls regularly putting party support and representation in double digits.
Yet across mainstream media there is a scorn, dismissal and caricature of all things Green. A Times discussion this week saw Tory peer Danny Finkelstein say the party was completely “against wealth and growth” while ex-Lib Dem Polly Mackenzie commented “I really hate that the Green Party is not really very green.”
Similar views can be found in parts of the left, with a recent article by Katie Coles in International Socialism citing views of Greens as “Tories on bikes”, “nature lovers devoid of any real class politics”, “putting capitalism under green management” and promoting “electoralism”.
Cliched views can be found in Scotland. A Daily Record Planet Holyrood conversation in the last few days saw the Greens dismissed as “a protest vote” and “far left” topped by the bizarre observation that with the rise of Reform they couldn’t understand how the Greens could win extra support and seats at Holyrood next year. If you think that a one-off, the same folk who regularly call for “fresh thinking” in Scotland describe the party as “wanting to take Scotland back to the Stone Age” and to “impoverish all of Scotland.”
The Greens must be doing something right to cause such consternation. Yet at the same time, beyond such ridiculous views, something is missing in the Scottish Greens. There is a disconnection on many of the issues facing voters – the cost of living, public services, local government, and even a lack of a distinctive vision on independence.
Green Weaknesses
Not only that there is something in the culture of some sections of the party which is not healthy. This can be seen in its internal echo chambers, the language used, and the ways that esteemed land reform campaigner Andy Wightman was driven out of the party. Party members talk with dismay about finding “self-righteousness”, “a degree of puritanism” and “the prevalence of student politics – all gesture and not grown-up.”
The language of the Greens, including of some of its leaders and elected representatives, can cause problems for the party’s wider appeal. Ross Greer, co-leader with Gillian Mackay, made media headlines with his criticism of Winston Churchill particularly in relation to the wartime Bengal famine, but it came over as caricatured and attention-seeking. Maggie Chapman, Green MSP, got into trouble for calling the Supreme Court decision on trans rights “bigoted” and has been in effect deselected by Green activists for next year.
Why does this exist in parts of Green culture and language? One reason is that electoral success came relatively easy to the party. They first gained representation in the Scottish Parliament in 1999 with Robin Harper, and in the following election, 2003, made a major breakthrough achieving 6.9% of the regional vote and six seats in what became the “rainbow Parliament” aided by the rise of the Scottish Socialists. The party then went down in 2007 as the SNP rose but on the back of the political engagement of the 2014 indyref the Greens achieved 6.6% in 2016 and six seats.
Both breakthroughs – 2003 and 2016 – have occurred without as much hard work as you would think, aided by the efforts of others and the effects of wider currents. This has contributed to a culture whereby the party has not had to deal with the big issues it should do to grow and prosper or have to make the difficult choices intrinsic to politics, and break with some of the unchallenged assumptions that activists in all parties have. As one Green activist put it: “The Greens have not really grown-up as much as they should because they have not had to.”
One germane example of this has been the Greens’ experience in political office – then and since. When Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater were ministers, alongside the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf, it was not a happy experience. While there were achievements, both struggled to be effective ministers, to chart a course and deliver. Both struggled with the pressures and media scrutiny, Slater particularly, with the bottle deposit scheme a particular low. If that were not enough, the party has post-office retreated into telling itself how successful this period was, including at length at last weekend’s party conference, seemingly disinterested in learning from its shortcomings.
The party’s trajectory in recent times has seen it over-identify with the most enthusiastic part of the electorate which is pro-Green – the student vote. It makes sense to maximise your vote amongst your most energised supporters, but not to reinforce their prejudices and turn others off. As one young member put it: “The Greens are now fixated with the student vote and its obsessions and have forgotten about older voters” – critical in a society where older voters turn out in higher numbers.
If this sounds too negative, or dismissive of the Greens in a way reminiscent of media cynicism, it isn’t meant to be. Part of success is engaging in mature reflection, facing choices and addressing your own built-in prejudices to learn and grow. The Greens have not done enough of that in Scotland.
The Political Space and Opportunity for the Scottish Greens
The Scottish Greens have had impact. They have made a positive contribution and challenged the stale centrist politics which characterises too much of public life. But given this fact, the inadequacies of Westminster, the limited politics on offer from Holyrood, and SNP incumbency, there is a clear centre-left space for a radical Green politics, a politics of shaking things up and challenging the status quo.
Yet the divisions, lack of strategy and not doing the hard work to aid radical politics has come at a cost. There have been long-standing leadership divisions, particularly acute in the Patrick Harvie-Maggie Chapman years when their well-known poor relationship affected policy-making and organisational unity.
The Scottish Green recent conference voted against co-operating with the Corbyn-Sultana Your Party, unlike the English and Welsh party, and this has blown up in their face. Within days three Glasgow councillors and Ellie Gomersall, second on the Glasgow list behind Harvie, defected from the Greens to Your Party. Dan Hutchison, one of the councillors commented: “I’ve spent the last ten years fighting to get the Greens to be the left-wing force they think they are” while the reality has been supporting SNP cuts and centrism.
Adam Ramsay, Scottish Green member and journalist, observed: “What Zack also showed is that the best way to deal with Your Party was to appear open to collaboration with them, as allies. In voting against that path, the Scottish Greens have triggered a haemorrhage among a number of their leading activists in Glasgow – the consequences of which we are yet to see.”
A Green agenda with greater substance, depth and reach is possible in Scotland – building on the Green surge already evident down south. But it does require serious work, recognising that radicalism requires more than rhetoric and posturing, and developing a language which is not hectoring or on occasion illiberal of other opinions.
Such an approach would have the environment and need for global system change at its centre; it would challenge the complacencies, smugness and closed nature of so much of Scottish institutional life and how much it lets down people who need support most; and it would have a laser focus on the issues of anxiety, insecurity and powerlessness which disfigure today’s society. It would speak up for the voiceless, be disciplined and have an awareness that radical politics needs leadership and effective messaging.
Economy, Power and Scottish Independence
As well as this the Scottish Greens need, like their English and Welsh partners, to address political economy and the nature of British capitalism in charting a new economic agenda. This is not as easy as it sounds in Scotland where all the centre-left forces have forsworn talking about the economy and political economy for decades.
The Greens need to understand the wider constraints across the UK, as economist and writer James Meadway says: “I think it’s essential that we develop a widely shared critique and alternative to Britain’s economic model – one shared beyond the Greens alone and across different parties, including those on the Labour left.” Such an enterprise faces numerous challenges he believes: “This is more challenging than some on the left think: Corbynism, like Modern Monetary Theory, was a product of low interest rates and low inflation.”
Meadway believes such an approach demands taking on economic and political power across the UK which the left have barely faced up, commenting: “We need a much more radical approach to economic change, including directly addressing the problem of wealth distribution and the operations of the core economic institutions like the Treasury and the Bank of England.”
Such an enterprise has not been undertaken substantively on the left for decades and is not something the Scottish Greens can just leave to their Southern allies. Rather this is intrinsic to mapping out a different version of Scotland, and in particular a version of independence which breaks with the safety-first continuity offer from the SNP. This aspires to be as unthreatening as possible to not scare off middle class voters and pensioners worried about losing the benefits they have from the current British state.
This SNP approach has always had a certain logic, but it is effectively a cul-de-sac that assumes that the UK can fall apart by default, and never makes explicit the real gains that would make the disruption worth it for a large enough constituency. The Greens have in their years as a permanent fixture in Holyrood never undertaken any detailed work offering an alternative prospectus on independence.
This, combined with the Greens getting more serious and reflecting on the Green surge, could be a major contribution not just to their fortunes, but in breaking out of the complacency and inertia of Scottish politics. A different independence vision drawn together by the Greens could unite trade unionists, NGOs, environmental campaigners, and a wide array of progressive opinion.
It would address the UK broken model, economic power in Scotland and the UK, and pose a form of governance breaking with Treasury orthodoxies here and across the UK – something the SNP refused to do in their 2014 offer (being beholden to the Treasury and Bank of England) and subsequently. In so doing this would complement Zack Polanski’s Greens and radicals across the UK in challenging the status quo.
This is an Age for Insurgency: A Green Insurgency?
The Scottish Greens could choose not to go down this road and continue as they have been – getting a decent vote and representation for a politics without a cutting edge, which is not really a threat to the vested interests and centrist political establishment.
This would be the path of least resistance and is clearly the road of past and present Green leaderships, of the Patrick Harvie era and now Gillian Mackay and Ross Greer. This is barely an adequate response given the domestic and international environment, global climate crisis, and fragile state of much of Scottish society, let alone the raging forces of reaction, racism and fascism which are now threatening to burn down anything decent remaining across Western societies.
Scottish politics and public life needs insurgents, needs power to be challenged, and the closed order of elites, institutions and professions scrutinised. This is an age where the centralist managerialism of Starmer and Swinney will not wash, and where people are so desperate for change that they are prepared to turn to Farage.
The Scottish Greens can be an alternative. They can be part of the insurgent Green surge. But they need to embrace change, clearly chart a direction, and make the case for a different Scottish and global future. If they dare to, they could contribute to something genuinely exciting – a fresh start which breaks with the failed orthodoxies of the past four decades, that sets out a new kind of society and that offers a hopeful alternative to the virulent forces of racism, reaction and the far-right.
