THE Scottish Greens have said they “won’t work with” the Tories at council level as they launched their local authority manifesto focusing on climate justice and the environment.
Co-leaders Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie made the assertion as they revealed their policies urging voters to “think global, act local” and to give Green candidates their first-preference votes.
The leaders said it was “possible” that the Greens could hold the balance of power in many areas across Scotland - but added they would not enter into power sharing with the Conservatives.
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They would be open to working with other parties with a “common interest” however, Slater added.
The party is pushing active travel, traffic reduction, improvement to public transport networks, investment in local services and 20-minute neighbourhoods as key policies.
Speaking at the launch event in East Kilbride, Slater was asked about how ambitious the party is about going into coalitions with other parties at local level.
She responded: “The Scottish Greens believe in consensus, negotiation and grown up politics and we’ve shown at Holyrood that working with other parties can lead to good governance and that kind of grown up politics that we all want to see.
“Greens absolutely are interested in working with other parties across Scotland, we wouldn’t work with the Scottish Tories, but other parties where we have a common interest to make sure that they can deliver on what we want to deliver in terms of active travel, nature restoration, better recycling, all those things matter.
“It will of course depend on the exact electoral map in each council, but there are possibilities that the greens could hold the balance of power just about anywhere.”
Harvie was later asked to expand on Slater’s comments during a media huddle with journalists and if the constitutional issue was the main problem the party had working with the Tories.
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Harvie said: “Something that is polarising and divisive at a national level doesn’t stop you working together at a local level, and I think politics has way too much of that toxic, hostile, polarised division when actually communities work best when folk try to find common ground.
“I think the issue with the Tories is we have a lot less common ground.”
The co-leaders were also asked what they would class as a successful result at the local elections in May.
Harvie said: “At the moment we’ve got significant groups of councillors that have done really well in Glasgow and Edinburgh and we’ve got individual councillors, ones and twos elsewhere, so we want to have a presence on more local councils across Scotland.
“We’re standing in the largest number of wards ever, I think about two thirds of the wards across Scotland.
“If we can have more local councils where there are first green voices and also build on our track record in big cities then that will be fantastic.”
Slater added: “We’ve seen how even having green councillors, even one or two, where we haven’t had green councillors before, can make a big difference.
“We were able to declare a climate emergency in the Highlands and Islands with only one councillor, but ofcourse when we have strong councillor groups we expect them to grow even stronger and have even more people represented by greens in their local government.”
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Circular economy minister Slater urged voters to give Scottish Greens candidates their first preference votes.
She said: “We are in a nature and climate emergency, and many of the decisions that have the most impact on the ground are made by councils, that’s the reason we say think global, act local.
“We need to get more Greens into our councils to bring vision for our communities that is fit for the 21st century, and to deliver it through better planning and services.
“But that can only happen if voters give the Scottish Greens their first preference vote, second or third preferences will not get Greens elected, and our councils could stagnate under the old style politics which doesn’t look at the bigger picture.”
The Scottish Greens local manifesto can be read online here.
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