Are Scottish Greens more about independence than climate change these days? – Christine Jardine MP

In the polarised world in which we find ourselves, I think it is safe to say there is one thing that almost all of us can agree on. Climate change.

Patrick Harvie of the Scottish Greens at the launch of the party's independence campaign on the day the UK left the EU (Picture: John Devlin)

Except perhaps for US Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, who described it as too controversial an issue to get into, and said that she lacked the expertise to know for sure.

One wonders what it is that this arbiter of US law and guardian of society thinks will be easy and non-controversial about life as a Supreme Court judge?

Especially as climate change is now squarely at the top of the international political agenda – Covid-19 apart – and has been officially recognised in so many countries, including our own, as an emergency.

Just last week the Prime Minister declared that he can now see the wood despite the trees, and warned against “napping” on climate change with an announcement which performed a complete U-turn on his previous proclamation that wind-power could not remove the skin from a rice pudding.

I wonder if his next portion of the dessert will come with humble pie served up for him by the many people in this country whose voices have, for decades, been raised in protest at carbon-fuelled environmental damage.

Climate politics now mainstream

As far back as my teenage years – and that is quite a while ago now – there were warnings about the hole in the ozone layer and potential damage from CO2 emissions.

When my parents’ conservative politics failed to attract my loyalty in the 1980s it was – as for so many of my generation – environmental politics that seemed to offer a way forward.

Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace were our inspiration and we took pride in our Body Shop and Fair Trade products and foodstuffs.

So much of what then seemed almost like a middle-class revolution is now commonplace. And rightly so.

Green issues, environmental politics and climate change are now completely integrated into public thinking and a major topic whenever any politician speaks at a public Q-and-A.

Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg held the global news spotlight for much of last year and the start of this one, until Covid elbowed them off the stage.

A tough election

The fear that our seas and their helpless inhabitants are drowning in plastic has exercised everyone from TV executives to primary school classes.

It was perhaps the most widely referenced sentiment of the past two years that this is the first generation to fully realise the threat of climate change and the last to be able to do anything about it.

So why then, when the Green movement carries the hopes of a generation, why is it that the party which is its standard-bearer has failed to turn its near-ubiquitous support into major electoral gains?

The Greens have had a difficult couple of years. A tough General Election – and believe me I am no stranger to them myself – saw the Scottish party field candidates in a third of the seats and nationally return only one MP, Caroline Lucas in England.

In Scotland, part of their strategy was not to field candidates in SNP-held marginals. Presumably at least partly because they feared, and faced, a backlash from independence supporters claiming they would split the vote.

And there may be the key, in Scotland at least, for the major breakthrough which we all expected ten years ago failing to materialise.

Have they become too focussed on being the other independence party rather than the main, some would say only Green Party?

Green Investment Bank

Voters already have the choice of several other parties committed to fighting climate change as part of their agenda, why not just stick with one of them?

As climate change has moved up the political agenda it has, in different ways, become central to the policies of more than one of the other parties.

One of the major successes of the coalition government of 2010-15 was the Liberal Democrat’s championing, and achieving, the establishment of a Green Investment Bank.

Our current party leader Ed Davey was one of the original architects behind the framework that was used to establish the Paris Agreement. What should have been a significant step towards climate change.

Liberal Democrats have championed green energy in and out of Government, in both Westminster in Holyrood and in local authorities up and down this country.

In Edinburgh alone our councillors, MSP and myself, have all been pushing for an earlier implementation of a city-wide low emission zone.

Our councillors have argued for new and expanded park-and-ride sites in south and west Edinburgh, opposed the SNPs garden tax and reduction in recycling centre opening hours and allocated the most money in their budget of any political group for parks and green spaces and to protect council funding for cycling.

Priorities

But, our critics might claim: “You are not only for green issues, that is not your only priority.”

Sadly neither are the Scottish Greens any more.

If their raison d’etre – at the moment – is actually separation and backing up the SNP, then the climate emergency is in danger of having to play second fiddle.

Is a vote for a Green a vote to send a message on the climate or is it about independence?

Scotland has the power to actually be world-leading. We have the political commitment here and, with the backing of the right Government at Westminster, the resources to make the future green.

And we must use this Covid challenge and the resources of the UK exchequer to build a stronger, greener economy when the crisis is over.

That, for me, is a commitment which will never play second fiddle to independence.

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