Strategies to win a better world

We’re living through an age of crises. 

The climate emergency is ripping across our planet largely unabated, democracy is under attack and in retreat on every continent and here in Scotland a cost of living crisis is crushing the life and the hope out of communities who were already struggling.

None of this is inevitable. These calamities were all man-made, and they can all be unmade. Socialists have the solutions, we just need the will and the strategy to win the struggle for a better world.

I’m starting this newsletter because I want to talk about the real and tangible changes we can make  - and how we make them.

I approach my job on the basis that no child is fed, no species saved, no emissions cut by me just giving another speech or firing off another tweet about how right my party is and how wrong everyone else is. This won’t be that kind of blog either.

Focusing on results, on delivering real change, has been key to the growth of the Scottish Greens in the post-indyref era. We’ve delivered free bus travel for young people, expanded free school meals and cancelled school meal debt, set up the first Nature Restoration Fund, froze rents and redistributed billions of pounds from those on the highest to lowest incomes through tax reforms. This is what our voters want, what our members want, and what our MSPs and councillors want to deliver.

With less than a year left before the election, MSPs face a flurry of bills to be dealt with before Parliament dissolves. These offer a myriad of opportunities to deliver the kind of transformative changes desperately needed by people across Scotland - change that will not happen without Greens in the room to fight for it.

That won’t be all I write about here, but in areas from housing to land reform to community wealth building, the time to act is now. This is our opportunity to right historic wrongs, redistribute power and take action on the cost of living and climate crises.

And with the election just a year away, there is a lot to discuss about the position and future of the Scottish Greens. Recent government rollbacks on climate action, the onslaught against LGBTQ rights and increasing corporate power at the cost of democracy all show just how critical it is that we achieve another record result next May. 

That will come later though. To start things off, I’ve written about how we [tax the rich to tackle the housing crisis] - and the changes I’ve proposed to the Housing Bill to deliver this.

Head over here to read the first of that two-parter.

My plan here is to kick off some debate within the Greens and the wider Left about how we win and deliver on our vision. The situation couldn’t be more urgent, our solutions to the crises have never been more needed than they are now. We won’t blog our way to socialism, but spaces like this can give momentum to the kind of action our communities need to see.

If you want to keep up to date with these discussions, make sure to subscribe.