Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Yousaf blew it with Greens
WHAT once seemed like a marriage made in heaven has collapsed in catastrophic fashion.
An acrimonious divorce is never pleasant but, if there is one crumb of comfort, it is a future in which both parties are no longer required to live in the same house.
Sadly, in politics, these rules do not apply and, therefore, elected members of the SNP and Scottish Green Party will continue to inhabit the same political home. But where precisely did the relationship break down?
In August 2021, members of both parties voted overwhelmingly to approve a power-sharing agreement which pledged to achieve several things. These included making Scotland “an independent country within the European Union”, investing over
£1 billion in energy efficiency and renewable heating as well as committing to marine environmental protection.
So significant was the support that 95% of SNP members and 88% of Scottish Green members backed it, and Scottish Green co-conveners Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater entered government.
On Thursday, shortly after Humza Yousaf dismissed the two ministers, the response was as you would expect after an acrimonious divorce. Ms Slater described the dissolution of the agreement as “an act of political cowardice… weak and thoroughly hopeless” and, at First Minister’s Questions, Mr Harvie brusquely asked who Mr Yousaf could now rely upon for his majority. By contrast, the first minister was congratulatory of their collective achievements in his earlier press conference.
However, what achievements are these? Consider the agreement to which I earlier referred:
● The Scottish Government has spent over £150,000 on multiple independence white papers and over £250,000 on Supreme Court legal fees and Scotland is no more of an independent nation nor EU member state than when this agreement was co-signed.
● It has already spent much of its £1.8bn budget penalising people who wish to use woodburning stoves in new-build homes as well as transitioning from existing heat pumps and boilers, yet energy costs are still to drop.
● It spent almost £100,000 deliberating on highly protected marine areas before the minister responsible, Mairi Mcallan, admitted a failure of “genuine collaboration” with coastal communities and scrapped the plans.
The above measures have either failed, cost significant amounts of taxpayers’ money to implement or been scrapped
– and I have not yet touched on their involvement in pushing for low emission zones, a deposit return scheme and gender recognition reform. Wherever you look in the Scottish political landscape, you see Green fingerprints all over every failed scheme or example of political incompetence.
Their central achievement has been to alienate unionists on the constitution, rural inhabitants on energy-efficiency measures, fishermen on marine areas, lowincome drivers in non-compliant vehicles, businesspeople on deposit return and the wider public on gender reform.
Former Scottish Green leader, Robin Harper, last year wrote: “I am seriously concerned by many aspects of the Green performance in the parliament. (They) have drifted from their central ethic – the environment.”
Last week, the Greens left government. This week – Humza Yousaf?