Some facts about Scottish Greens – in case media have failed to make them clear

The Scottish Green Party is often misunderstood and misrepresented in our media – a hangover from an earlier time when the party was guilty of overlooking any meaningful class analysis in its policies, but also as a result of being an organisation whose structure defied the normal operating procedures of its political opponents.

That, and the reality that much of the UK press is characterised by an arrogant disinterest in having any real understanding of the Scottish political scene, something that my fellow independence supporters can no doubt attest to.

But now for the first time in our history, the Greens are heading for government – and a lackadaisical attitude to green politics is no longer an option.

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So let’s clear up a surprisingly common misconception first. The Scottish Green Party and the Green Party of England and Wales are two distinct and separate parties with quite different political leanings. Yes, they may share a word between them – but so do “strawberry jam” and “traffic jam”. There is no such thing as the UK Green Party.

The relationship between both parties would best be described as like siblings, united in their belief that climate change is one of the most pressing issues in the history of our species – and not necessarily much else.

With the Scottish Greens having continuously held seats in the Scottish Parliament since its grand re-opening, and in recent sessions having played the role of Holyrood kingmaker, it’s frankly ridiculous this basic error is still being made.

Beyond that, there’s another key facet of the party that needs to be better understood: – the Greens are a democratic entity, and democracy can get a little wild at times.

Despite the deal with the SNP being something that the Greens’ leadership clearly viewed as the next step in the party’s evolution, the decision to accept it still ultimately came down solely to the membership.

One of the defining elements of the Scottish Green Party is its commitment to keeping the reins of the party in the hands of its members and that’s something that sets it apart from Scotland’s other mainstream political parties. Had the membership voted against it during Saturday’s EGM meeting, the deal would have died on the spot.

In contrast, nobody really believes that the SNP’s last-minute consultative ballot would have had a jot of influence on the outcome of the deal, so it’s rather fortunate that the results so heavily came down on the side of party leadership.

As a journalist, I’ve sat through enough SNP conference motions on the theme of “conference agrees that the SNP are doing a good job on x” to know that, broadly, any feeling of democratic input within Scotland’s governing party is mostly manufactured, barring the rare member-led coup that slips through the cracks.

NO, in this case the path of the Scottish Government was set by the hundreds of Green members who showed up to debate, listen and vote on the agreement in, as one member described it, “the Zoom where it happened”.

With the Scottish Greens, the unpredictable cut of democratic debate is on full display at every party conference and meeting and to an outsider whose understanding of party machinery is so removed from what they are viewing, that can only lead to misunderstanding.

During conference, it’s possible to switch from voting on rent controls to space junk to badgers to scrapping council tax in less than an hour – that’s the nature of removing the gate-keeping from policy propositions.

Sometimes, you are going to hear wild proposals. Even during the discussion of the co-operation deal, there were two well-meaning (if misguided) attempts to raise an amendment from the floor.

Yet, historically, the more eccentric conference motions have found themselves reported on as de facto statements on the nature of the party rather than the natural result of a democratic approach to policy making.

And it has been a singular failure of the British press that any disagreements within political groups must be viewed through the sensationalist lens of schisms and fractures rather than healthy disagreement.

With the Greens set to potentially hold more political power in this parliamentary term than ever before, we need our press to wise up about how these issues should be responsibly reported on.

Of course, on the flip side of that is the fact that much of our press and many commentators are prolifically hostile to left-wing and so-called “woke” politics, wherein there’s no interest at all in reporting fairly on an issue when there’s an opportunity to demonise instead.

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The level of frothing anger that has followed each development on the Green-SNP co-operation deal, from pundits and politicians alike, should give an indication of the onslaught the Greens are about to face over the next few years – even if it has been darkly amusing to watch play out.

Scottish Tory MSP Murdo Fraser didn’t waste a moment before cracking out some of the political right’s greatest hits following the news the Greens were moving toward an agreement, including everyone’s favourite homophobic “anti-families” dog whistle.

Andrew Neil’s comical Daily Mail rant, on the other hand, came closer to the mark in his assessment of the Greens as anti-monarchy, anti-Britain, anti-wealth eco-zealot Marxists – though I doubt he meant it as the compliment it was.

It will be some time before we know if backing the co-operation deal was the right move for the Scottish Greens, but in the end it will have been a decision made by the membership for what they thought was best. Now it’s time for our press to catch up to a different way of doing things.