As the Scottish Parliament gets ready to return from recess, Scotland’s Silly Season is theoretically over – and what a season it’s been. It’s hardly been a happy time for any major Scottish Party but few political anoraks could have missed the extra-strong patter about “Civil Wars” brewing in the Scottish Greens and Conservatives. With just 8 months left to go until crunch Holyrood elections, a shared summer of strife may have sent the two in radically different directions.
The Green Civil War That Wasn't
After a remarkably low profile campaign, Gillian Mackay and Ross Greer have just taken up office as Co-Leaders of the Scottish Green Party. This is a huge change at the top of the party after Patrick Harvie’s 17 years in office. Meanwhile Lorna Slater, his counterpart for the past 6 of those, failed to be re-elected.
I make no secret of my prior history in the Greens, which has led to be me being friendly with all four of these leading figures; I’ve not been active in the party for over four years now, but I have quietly maintained a membership. Bear that in mind, of course, but also consider that means that, quite frankly, I know a damn sight more about the party than almost any other commentator.
Not so very long ago, I would have been astonished if you’d told me the leadership campaign would pass without any sign of rancour. Throughout the period of the Bute House Agreement, where the Scottish Greens entered government for the first time alongside the SNP, it seemed like internal pressure had been building. This led first to the calling of an extraordinary general meeting to determine the future of the agreement, then Humza Yousaf’s truly idiotic decision simply to brutally and publicly sack the Greens.
In the aftermath of this, an already established briefing campaign against the MSP group became increasingly intense. When Harvie announced he wouldn’t be re-contesting the leadership, a source made sure that some of the first reactions reported were pretty poisonous. Broader awareness of internal ructions likely came when Harvie then – to positive reception – was reported calling out such anonymous briefing as fundamentally un-Green in his final conference speech as Co-Leader.
As candidate selections for next year’s Holyrood election got underway, the notion of a Green Civil War gained more and more traction in the media. Factions were identified and titled. There was the “Glasgow” faction of rebels, and an “Edinburgh” faction of sitting MSPs which actually contained not a soul from Edinburgh on the other; the Times, perhaps, not thinking that the Parliament’s base at Holyrood might have made for a better name.
Yet it was not consumed
Just as quickly as this all hit boiling point though, the heat suddenly dissipated. The hostile anonymous briefings came pretty much to an end, surely not coincidentally after a particular member was suspended from the party. Journalists may have cause themselves to think about how reflective of their parties the people willing to pick up the phone to them offering juicy anonymous backbiting are, and thus whether what they are reporting is in the public interest or just furthering someone’s personal agenda.
All bar one of the sitting MSPs was re-selected to top their respective list. The one that wasn’t was not only the most obviously cold towards the BHA, but wasn’t beaten by an especially leftist challenger. Greer and Harvie had been specifically targeted for toppling, yet Greer easily won a majority of the vote. Harvie himself was run a good bit closer, but still only a minority of the selectorate actually backed the slate seeking to oust him, with the majority of the difference going to an unaffiliated candidate.
Then, after setting the stage to run a councillor partly on an odd platform of “it’d be great for a national party leader not to have a national profile or focus”, no such challenger appeared. Whatever the publicly stated reasons, it might be fair to conclude the failure to dethrone Harvie and Greer in their regions at selection time indicated poor prospects of winning a nationwide leadership spot.
Is it all uphill from here?
There are two ways to look at what this means in long run. On the one hand, not testing support with the membership may give dissidents cover to maintain the pretence of representing the true mind of the grassroots over the next couple of years. Can’t have it pointed out that they weren’t all that enamoured with you if you didn’t risk getting that put on the record!
On the other, clearly the “Civil War” notion was overblown. Certainly, things were awful for a lot of folk for a few years, but perhaps those at the centre naturally felt it to be more all-consuming than it really was. If there was a war brewing, it was won without a shot being fired.Â
Either way, Mackay and Greer take office under much calmer circumstances than they may have feared a few months ago. With nearly two thirds of the vote between them, there’s a clear mandate from active members (turnout, although low, was pretty standard for the Greens) for a new generation of leadership. The challenge for them now is to amp up the energy for the campaign and reach out to new voters, whilst progressing much needed cultural and structural change to the party.
If they can deliver on polling that suggests a double digit seat and vote share are within reach, they’ll be one of the strongest Green parties in the present moment. Contrast neighbouring Ireland where the local party crashed from a dozen to just one TD last year, or Norway in the other direction where it remains to be seen whether they can finally cross the 4% threshold for full representation in the Storting in a few days time.
The Conservative Conflict That's Just Getting Worse
Very rare are the occasions in which this could be said, but Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay must be looking with some envy at his Green counterparts. Not only have they avoided a full blown Civil War, but their polling continues to be at least a touch better than in 2021. If only that were the case for his party.
The Great Ruth Revival of 2016 is well and truly dead. Ironically enough, Davidson herself may have been the one to set the kindling for the flames now engulfing her party. In knifing her trusty lieutenant and fellow social liberal Jackson Carlaw, and parachuting traditional conservative Douglas Ross into his place, she undid her own modernising project.
This wasn’t immediately apparent in 2021, when the party held steady, but it didn’t take much longer. With the UK party in increasing disarray, the Scottish arm could have attempted to chart a different course. Yet, after a brief flirtation with mass demands for Boris Johnson’s resignation, seemingly all Ross’ leadership had to offer Scots was tired lines about opposing a referendum everyone knew was off the table, with a side helping of increasingly nasty invective against queer people, especially but not solely trans people.
The problem with leaning so heavily into culture war bollocks is that, despite what toxified social media algorithms may imply, most people either find that distasteful or simply do not care. Even as public opinion has swung more against trans people, for example, public interest has remained at rock bottom. “I know your bills are going up, you can’t get a GP appointment, and half your street is one big pothole, but I’m here to talk about the non-existent threat of IndyRef2 and how scary trans people are” is completely out of touch.Â
Is there anything to be said for saying another mass(ively offensive press release)?
Findlay is more of the same, but taken even further. This is a man who proudly posed for a photo waving a merkin that had been flashed in the chamber at Holyrood hours before. Had that been someone supportive of trans people, you can bet that’d have been met with outrage, not praise. After all, if you saw what seemed like the flashing of genitalia, your first instinct isn’t going to be to look long and hard to tell if it was real or not, is it?
An MSP group already deeply unhappy under Ross has since hit breaking point. Jamie Greene chucked the party and swung into the Lib Dems earlier this year, explicitly identifying his previous outfit as having returned to being the “Nasty Party”. In the space of a week in August, Jeremy Balfour quit the party accusing it of being too reactionary (a remarkably damning assessment from someone who used to work for the Evangelical Alliance), then Graham Simpson swung much further right by joining Reform UK.
It seems all but inevitable more will follow. Whether it’s defections to the right from people desperate to hold their seat, or to the centre from those disgusted by the party’s direction, this will hardly help their catastrophic polling. For the first time, the occasional outlier placing the Conservatives behind the Greens is starting to seem believable.Â
Man, early 50's, seeks safe seat
Worst of all, it could not be more obvious that Findlay is in fear of losing his seat. When Simpson defected, he was one of only two Conservative MSPs (who hadn’t announced retirement) that hadn’t yet been selected for a constituency. This seems like a clear snub in his case. The other? Findlay himself.
If you are staggering your selections and your party leader isn’t in an early tranche, it’s a sure sign you’re worried about finding him a winnable spot. I’ve noted previously that there is a – narrow, but credible – window in which the Conservatives hold Carlaw’s Eastwood constituency but are only due one MSP overall in West, Findlay’s current region. Thus, Findlay would be out.
I’m told he actually lives in Glasgow, but the party are not just guaranteed to lose their second MSP but quite possibly going to lose both. Neighbouring regions also don’t seem like an option. South is akin to West in that if they hold their constituencies, there’ll be no list MSPs. Central would entail elbowing out a young woman MSP, which is a dire look. And how would a shift to Highlands and Islands look at all credible?
Tory got low, low, low
Things have been bad for the Scottish Conservatives before, but never has it seemed so existential. It may be cold comfort to think that the UK party is hardly faring any better, rudderless under a leader out of her depth and incapable of not parroting the last conspiracy theory to cross her Twitter feed. That’s while her leadership rival has been enthusiastically embracing some of the most extreme positions I’ve seen enter mainstream politics in my lifetime.
Trying to steal another party’s clothes only works if they’ve already taken them off. The SNP could move onto Labour’s traditional territory in the late 00’s and throughout the 2010’s by appearing to pick up values and policies the latter had discarded. Yet all we have seen for 15 years of attempts to fend off the growth of the far right by accepting the premise of their arguments is the strengthening of those arguments and the parties that were pitching them first.
“Our opponents are right, but for the gods’ sakes don’t vote for them!” is a loser’s manifesto. The idea of Ruth Davidson as a prospective First Minister was always nonsense: she’d never get the numbers for it solo, and Labour would never back her. Yet she very effectively sold that idea with a vision of a different kind of Conservative Party, friendlier and more in tune with modern society, one also much more willing to get into a constitutional scrap than Labour. That was a roaring success in its time.
Lately, the Conservatives have been little more than a Reform UK tribute act; and though this would be a whole other piece, the same is increasingly true of Labour. Parties that lack their own identities will always struggle to garner support, and that goes double for parties so unsure of who they are and should be that they are tearing themselves to shreds.
When the votes are counted next May, perhaps the biggest winners will be those parties like the Greens, Lib Dems, and indeed Reform UK, that kept true to themselves rather than desperately aping their competitors or ditching long-held principles at the first sign of pushback.
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