THEY'RE calling it the "Green wave", and it has swept a record number of Green MEPs into the European Parliament.
However, that swell missed Scotland last night, denying the Scottish Greens the chance to send their first member to Brussels.
The party had high hopes of success with lead candidate Maggie Chapman, its co-convener.
But despite securing its best ever result at more than 8% of the vote, it was not enough.
READ MORE: Scotland turns map yellow as final EU election result is confirmed
The result comes despite gains for the Green Party of England and Wales, which more than doubled its representation from three MEPs to seven. They include "Magic" Magid Magid, the baseball cap-wearing former lord nayor of Sheffield, who said voters had chosen "hope over hate", adding: "We are loudly and proudly campaigning on issues that matter to people the most. We want to remain and fight for people."
And for Europe as a whole, Green parties are on course to take 70 seats, almost 20 more than last time around. In Germany, the Greens were second only to Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU coalition.
Reflecting on the results, Scottish Greens co-convener Patrick Harvie said he has "pretty mixed feelings" on his own party's performance. He told The National: "It's substantially up in numbers in Scotland, but it's only fractionally up in terms of share of that vote. It's not enough to make the breakthrough and it's going to be disappointing not to be sending our first MEP to Brussels.
"It's an extraordinary election, it's very unique circumstances and the SNP have managed to consolidate their position. Lots of people wanted to vote for the dominant pro-Remain party. That didn't happen in the rest of the UK."
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Harvie said Greens in England "managed to make the breakthrough because they presented themselves as a pro-Remain party within a more open field" in which Labour and the Tories had failed to articulate their cases, and that there are "different circumstances in Scotland".
Categorising Scotland as "unequivocally pro-Remain", he said the overall UK result – which includes 29 seats for Nigel Farage's Brexit Party – suggests a "crisis of faith in the once-dominant two party system" and a "crisis in the Westminster machinery which has proved so incapable of resolving Brexit".
On the implications for the Scottish Greens in the 2021 Holyrood election, he stated: "We have got a strong place to work from. We were already in the early stages of that campaign when we realised the European election was going ahead, so we refocused what we were doing but we will get back into the swing of building in our strongest areas."
Responding to the Scottish result on Twitter, Chapman said she was "gutted" but "really proud of the positive campaign we fought and hugely honoured to have led it". She went on: "Thank you so much to all who voted Green and supported our positive message of hope."
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