Andy Wightman considers standing as an independent in Holyrood election

Wightman resigned from the party in December, citing tension around transgender rights.

In his resignation latter the Lothian MSP said he will continue to “support Green politics” despite leaving the party.

READ MORE: Andy Wightman quits Greens after party threaten to expel him in transgender row

Wightman said he will soon be moving to the Highlands and launched a Twitter poll on Wednesday to ask people’s views on whether he should stand in the region.

He tweeted: “For personal and family reasons I will shortly be moving to live in Highland Region.

“Given that, should I stand as an independent in H&I at the Holyrood election in May?

“What do you think?”

More than 1600 people voted in the poll within the first hour of his tweet.

The Scottish Green party, whose Holyrood group decreased to five MSPs after Wightman left, said at the time that it was “deeply disappointed” by his resignation.

It comes as Scottish Greens's co-leader Lorna Slater came under fire for saying Wightman's resignation from the party was no loss as people didn't know who he was.

Yesterday, Slater said Wightman's resignation came as a "massive shock" but then went on to play down his departure arguing he was little known.

But her comments immediately caused fury with people on social media pointing out that Wightman had a higher public profile than Slater.

One Twitter user said: "As an ex-SGP member who campaigned I can absolutely guarantee that he is the reason many voted SGP on the list last time & if he stands as an independent (which I *really* hope he does) he'll get huge support again. We need land reform in Scotland, we need MSPs like Andy."

Another commented: "Who’s Lorna Slater???"

She also claimed Wightman never engaged with the women’s or LGBT groups within the Greens and that she would feel “very uncomfortable” working alongside MSPs who held different views on transgender rights.

READ MORE: Greens co-leader under fire for saying Andy Wightman was no loss to party

Asked whether he would be a big loss to the Scottish Greens, Slater told the Scotsman: “Andy leaving was a massive disappointment and to be honest a massive shock.

“Andy has very specific followers, but most people have no idea who he is. There’s a bit of a niche following there, but I don’t think it is a general issue.”

The co-leader said she “absolutely did not” recognise the accusation of intolerance in the party, adding that she did not know where that concern originated.

Slater said: "He didn’t even try to talk to us, so yeah, I don’t know where that comes from. He didn’t even try to talk to us about that.

"Does it come from a kind of male privilege where anyone who thinks differently than you is somehow silencing you? I don’t know, I’m a little unclear on that myself.”

The Scottish Green politician said it was “honestly a mystery” as to why Wightman resigned, saying she personally wrote to him asking him to stay and that he never approached the women’s network within the party to discuss the issue.

She said: “It was presented as a done deal and we offered to discuss the matter with him, I myself wrote to him to ask him to stay and talk to us, endless hours of discussion happened between our parliamentary group and our parliamentary staff and he would not be persuaded to continue the discussion with us.

"Andy at no point approached the women's network to ask us why we have the policies we have, over why we feel the way we do over trans rights. At no point did he engage with any of our trans members of the Rainbow Greens.

"So that’s why it came as a shock because if someone really wants to learn about those issues, we have those party bodies and discussing those things is pretty much what we do, that’s why we exist, and I really wish that when we had reached out to him to come and talk to us that he had taken us up on that.”

Slater said she did not have a message to women who had concerns around trans rights due to Wightman’s treatment.

She said most of the concerns were raised by men and that “as a majority” women “don’t have any issue around trans rights”.

The co-leader added: "I’m not sure that spending our time trying to argue with this tiny percentage of people who believe the nonsense and straight-up lies of that these groups are about is a good use of our time when actually what we need to be fighting for is proper healthcare for trans people, for trans people to feel safe and not be the victim of hate crimes.

"We have much more important things that we need to be doing around trans rights and around women’s rights, for example improving women’s representation in politics.

"We have bigger fish to fry than trying to change the minds of some people that have been caught up in some Twitter conspiracy story.”