AS I sit down to write this, a debate is taking place on the Scottish Elections Bill, which sets the timescale for the coming session at Holyrood. It’s not controversial, as there is broad agreement that the parliament elected in May this year should sit for five years instead of four. It’s becoming an expectation that this will be the norm from now on; European elections are already on a five-year cycle and with UK elections now also using a five-year term, the simplest way of preventing one election from clashing with another is to adopt this principle at all levels of government.

But it’s a reminder that elections aren’t just snapshots of public opinion, or judgements on what the parties have to say during the campaign. This May, voters will make a choice which will be with us till 2021. By that time, Scotland’s target date for generating 100 per cent of its electrical consumption from renewables will have passed, as will the target for 42 per cent cuts in our carbon emissions. Council tax valuations will be nearly thirty years out of date. Perhaps most shockingly for me, there will be first-time voters who weren’t even born when the rebooted series of Dr Who began!

Whether we’ll have continued to make progress in Scotland’s journey toward governing ourselves isn’t clear yet, but whatever constitutional situation we’re living in we’ll have had our own parliament, growing in confidence, for over two decades. In the early years, there used to be howls of outrage when MSPs tried to debate issues that weren’t strictly devolved; now almost everyone, even those who remain hostile to independence, accept that Holyrood must face up to global issues such as international development, trade, relationships with Europe, and issues of war and peace.

That growing confidence in governing Scotland will be of ever greater importance. Unless the UK government falls early, we’ll have come through a full decade of Tory rule at Westminster by the end of the next Holyrood parliament. I shudder to think of what will be left of our welfare state by that point, let alone the ongoing cuts to public spending and the “market knows best” approach to deregulating big business. It will take a truly bold Scottish Parliament if we’re to mount a credible response to protect Scottish society.

With that bold parliament, I believe Scotland can be protected against the worst excesses of a Tory decade. But more than that, Scotland can grasp the positive opportunities that lie ahead. We’ll need the courage to accept that change brings with it risk as well as opportunity, but that holding out against it only makes the risks greater and lets others grab the opportunities.

As we come to the end of the fossil fuel era, that change will be particularly challenging to countries like Scotland which still have an over-reliance on oil and gas. Unless we accept and embrace this change we’ll lose out to other countries on the high- value jobs which will come from decommissioning. Indeed, that danger is already upon us.

As we witness an economic “recovery” that’s giving so much benefit to the wealthiest while poverty and hunger persist, we should recognise that the way we judge economic success must change too. A continued obsession with growth won’t result in a fairer society, and unfettered markets will keep finding new ways to exploit people and the planet. As our public services face severe challenges, both in the funding available and in the demands placed upon them, they will need to change too. Public service reform is too often just code for cuts or privatisation; it must come to mean investing in the diverse, high quality and universal public services we need in the face of a changing world, and seeing the new opportunities that exist in this, the most networked generation there’s ever been.

The world is changing around us. Those who resist change in the current economic priorities won’t be able to stop it from coming; if they have their way, all they’ll do is ensure we miss out on the opportunities that change has to offer, leaving us only with the risk. Let’s be bold. Let’s elect a parliament that’s bold too, and ensure that Scotland steps ever more confidently.

Over the coming months, the Scottish Greens will set out the bold ideas that should be put into practice in the next session at Holyrood. We’ll do so with a strong track record of work since the Scottish Parliament began, holding governments to account and pushing them to be bolder. Never just mud-slinging for the sake of it; but never giving those in power an easy time when they need to go beyond their comfort zone.

Here’s to a bold Scottish Parliament, all the way into the 2020s.