Scottish Green Party Leadership Election 2025

Earlier this year, Patrick Harvie announced that he would not re-contest the position of Scottish Green Party Co-Leader, which he had held jointly with Lorna Slater. A Glasgow MSP since 2003, at the time of this announcement Harvie was by far the longest serving current leader of a Holyrood party. He’d first taken up the then-role of Co-Convener in 2008, an awkward role that combined outward-looking political leadership with inward-focused administrative duties. He held that position right up until constitutional changes in 2019 introduced a more traditional, albeit still diarchic, Co-Leadership. 

By virtue of being the only one of the party’s leadership figures to be an MSP up until 2021, Harvie was consistently the most prominent of the pair at any given time until then. He was in the hot seat through several defining moments. These included most of the SNP’s first tenuous minority government, which nearly fell after the Greens voted against the budget in 2009; the 2014 Independence Referendum, where as the face of the only other Pro-Independence party at Holyrood he got wide exposure; and jointly leading the Greens into government for the first time following the Bute House Agreement in 2021, ill-fated though it was.

Given the length of Harvie’s tenure and recent first-time experience of government, this contest is easily the most consequential leadership election in the Scottish Green Party’s history. Whether folk would admit it to themselves or not, the story of the Scottish Greens following their explosive post-Independence referendum growth has been one of trying to figure out what the point of being a political party is.

Is it a party for hobbyists; nice, well meaning people doing politics to pass their time rather than to win? Is it a party for positionalists; nice, well meaning people for whom politics is about being seen to take a stand and say the right thing? Is it a party for practicalists; nice, well meaning people for whom politics is a means to delivering tangible if imperfect change? What’s the happy medium to be found between these?

Following hot on the heels of the party’s selection process for 2026 MSP candidates, I wondered if this contest would be a real testing ground for that question. In actual fact, all bar one of the party’s sitting MSPs were re-selected at the top of their lists, and with those MSPs making up three of the four candidates, things look set to be a lot more muted than had seemed likely earlier in the summer.

As ever, one thing worth bearing in mind is my own historic association with the Scottish Greens, something I make no secret of. Heavily involved for a total of eight years, I haven’t had any formal involvement since 2021. Nonetheless, social connections don’t disappear overnight, and that’s eight years of insight that few other commentators have.