Greens bid to pull in disaffected Lib Dem voters

THE Green Party is to target vulnerable Liberal Democrat MSPs at next year's Holyrood election in a bid to capitalise on anger over the UK coalition government's cuts programme.

Jeremy Purvis, tipped by many as a possible future leader of the Lib Dems in Scotland, is top of the Greens' list of targets, Scotland on Sunday has learned.

Purvis has a majority of just 598 in his Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale seat and is also facing stiff opposition from the SNP and Conservatives. The Greens are also planning to target Jim Tolson in Dunfermline and Mike Pringle in Edinburgh South, both of whom also have small majorities. While the Greens are unlikely to win any of the seats, their presence may take away enough support for the Lib Dems to lose out.

Until now the Greens have preferred to concentrate on the party-list section of the election and rarely put up constituency candidates, to save resources.

However, party insiders have made it clear that they think they have an opportunity to pick up disaffected Lib Dems angry at the party's decision to make a deal with the Conservatives at Westminster.

They also think that Lib-Dem backing for projects such as the M74 extension and US tycoon Donald Trump's controversial golf course in Aberdeenshire have wrecked the party's green credentials.

The decision to back Trump's development on the Menie dunes led to the party ostracising one of its councillors, Martin Ford, for using his casting vote to initially stop the project going ahead.

He and several other Lib Dems have since joined the Greens as a result.

A senior source in the Green Party said: "The polls have long shown that a big group of Green voters are disaffected Lib Dem supporters, and that was true even before they put David Cameron into Downing Street.

"The utter betrayal of voters who were told as recently as May that only the Lib Dems could keep the Tories out of power must leave many Lib Dem MSPs looking at the jobs pages.

"Next year, therefore, we'll be hammering them on their cuts agenda, on their preference for motorways over public transport, and their plans to privatise Royal Mail amongst other things. We just announced a perfect set of candidates to take votes off them on the Holyrood lists."

The Lib Dems dismissed the challenge and claimed being in the coalition government should boost their support in Scotland.

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