OF all political theories floating around academic and media circles, none are more fitting of the title that they come with than Horseshoe Theory.

The hypothesis goes that, rather than the far-left and the far-right being at opposite ends of the political spectrum, they are in fact much more closely aligned than at first sight.

This, in turn, twists the spectrum of political ideology from a straight line with distinct end points into a curve with the furthest points of left and right-wing activism curling in toward one another, like a horseshoe.

What makes the name particularly fitting is that the entire theory is as coherent as someone who has just been kicked in the head by a horse.

God grant me the confidence of a well-paid newspaper columnist or politician to point at universal healthcare, worker-owned co-operatives, white supremacy and rampant profiteering over worker welfare, and then boldly declare “these all look the same to me”.

The closest the argument comes to coherency is in that both the left and the right pose a material challenge to status-quo liberalism.

Yet even then, centrist reactionaries are far quicker to decry even mild left-wing positions as “extremism”, without ever quite challenging far-right ideologues in the same way.

Instead, they go into government with them

All of this is to say that SNP MSP Fergus Ewing’s latest outburst over the weekend, branding the Scottish Green Party as “extremists”, is part of a long tradition of attempts to delegitimise left-wing and progressive policies by equating them with their polar opposites.

It has me feeling all nostalgic for the time Jeremy Corbyn announced plans to broadcast communism directly into the minds of our poor, impressionable youth through cancer-inducing 5G beams – or was it just free universal broadband that was on offer?

It’s hard to keep track when Britain’s hard-right press is hell-bent on portraying even mild leftist reforms as the end of the United Kingdom as we know it.

If only

I’m sure the irony of running to the Daily Mail, of all papers, to call something else “extreme” was lost on Ewing.

Wikipedia no longer even counts it as a reliable source for citations – and given the state of the British press, it certainly wasn’t the only choice for him.

But that’s the power at play in Britain; where even the state broadcaster pulls left-leaning government critics from prime-time shows with one hand, while holding the studio door open for hard-right presenters with the other.

READ MORE: Kate Forbes hints that she wanted to stay on as finance secretary

And speaking of Andrew Neil, it was his frothing condemnation of the Scottish Green Party as anti-wealth eco-zealot Marxists that signalled the beginning of the narrative that the SNP were bringing an extreme faction into government in the first place.

This is a powerful tool that the far-right and bourgeois liberals use in equal measure; a method to continuously push the Overton window further to the right, to paint every minor concession to the left as positively fanatical while dismissing similar criticisms from the left as hyperbolic.

A lack of "radical" from the Greens

In the past few weeks alone, I’ve watched commentators look at photos of actual Seig Heiling neo-Nazis in Australia and dismiss it by accusing the left of calling everyone they don’t like “a Nazi”.

It’s evident as well in the US, when Republicans paint universal healthcare as a loony leftist policy that marks the downfall of civilisation, while it already exists (barely, desperately) under British neoliberalism.

When you look at the Greens’ record since joining the Government, there’s a significant lack of “radical” policy changes.

READ MORE: Activists call for buffer zone bill to be fast tracked in face of pro-life protest

The party has supported SNP budgets that pass disastrous cuts to local councils; budgets that will close vital services and reduce frontline personnel. There’s a lack of meaningful reform in areas of local and national taxation. The party has fallen short on supporting striking teachers, with a pay deal that many say still isn’t good enough.

Yes, the Greens have softened the edges of the SNP’s milquetoast fiscal policies, but radical change it is not. Yet still, they will be branded extremists.

In reality, Ewing’s advocacy for the full extraction of North Sea oil during a period of climate breakdown is, as far as I’m concerned, a far more extreme position than anything the Scottish Green Party has achieved so far in government with the SNP.

READ MORE: March for Scottish independence announced for Edinburgh in September

I say that the Greens absolutely have space to push the SNP further to the left – especially at a time when they will be branded Marxist revolutionaries for even farting in the direction of marginal economic reforms.

There isn’t a move to the left mild enough that the right-wing British press won’t seize upon as too radical, too loony and too controversial – something they’ll print over and over and over again until it infects the whole of Scotland.

I don’t believe the Scottish Green Party has anything to lose in pushing further. If the press and their political opponents will call them extreme no matter what, then there’s no reason to sacrifice good policy for the sake of keeping bad faith actors on board.