PATRICK Harvie says the Greens are on course for a “breakthrough” at next week’s General Election.
The co-convenor of the Scottish Greens, who is contesting the Glasgow North constituency, was speaking at the launch of his party’s manifesto, which had been delayed following last week’s terrorist attack in Manchester.
Harvie claimed he was frustrated that coverage of the party’s campaign so far had been about process rather than policy. The Greens have been dogged by criticism after standing candidates in just three of Scotland’s 59 constituencies.
Yesterday the Tories accused them of being SNP “mini-mes” while Labour called them “cheerleaders” for Nicola Sturgeon’s party.
Harvie apologised to the "many Green voters around the country who don’t have the chance to vote Green,” and urged them to challenge candidates on environmental issues.
He launched the manifesto with Edinburgh North and Leith candidate Lorna Slater, an electro-mechanical engineer who joined the party in the Green membership “surge” after the 2014 referendum.
Key pledges included calls for a “Green industrial revolution”, which the party said would help create more than 200,000 jobs in renewables, energy efficiency, forestry and North Sea decommissioning.
The party also repeated their call for a Universal Basic Income to “build a welfare system that removes the stigma of benefits, helps end the ‘poverty trap’ and promotes equality.”
On independence, the Greens said Scots should have a straight choice between staying in “hard Brexit Britain” or in “an independent Scotland free to rejoin the EU”. Speaking to The National, Harvie, who has been an MSP for the last 14 years, confirmed he would quit Holyrood if elected to Westminster.
He also drew parallels with the ambitions of his party and the SNP’s Westminster hopes in the 1980s.
“This is the first opportunity we have had to get a Green voice at Westminster," he said.
“We’re standing in some of the areas where at local ward levels Green candidates topped the poll in the election just the other week.”
He added: “As a small political party looking to take its first steps into Westminster, as the SNP did a number of decades ago, you don’t achieve everything you’re looking for overnight, but we have to begin to make that Green breakthrough, and it is in places like Glasgow North and Edinburgh North and Leith where Green candidates topped the poll, these are the places where we can make that Green breakthrough.”
“It has been frustrating a wee bit that some people just want to talk about process – the reality is we’ve got a positive agenda here that contrasts quite well with what’s coming from other parties about saying you have to vote against what you hate the most.
“We’ve got positive ideas.”
Scottish Labour environment spokeswoman Claudia Beamish said: “Patrick Harvie should have waited a day and launched his manifesto with Nicola Sturgeon, because the Scottish Greens are now just cheerleaders for the SNP.
Beamish added: “The Scottish Greens have given up any pretence of being concerned with the environment or austerity – for them it is Scottish nationalism first and everything else a distance second.”
Conservative environmental spokesman Maurice Golden said: “The Scottish Greens have been exposed as an SNP mini-me party. The Scottish Conservatives are the only party which will stand up to the SNP at this election – not cave into them.
“We are also the only party in Scotland which this year has set out clear plans to support the environment. That’s a prospectus we’re happy to set out to people right across Scotland.”
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