Can Greens be the challenge to Reform in Scotland?

Labour’s vicious attacks on disabled people & pensioners and the SNP’s lurch to the centre leave a huge gap for a bold left-wing force willing to counter Reform - so why aren’t the Scottish Greens surging?

If you listen to some commentators north and south of the border you’d think the UK’s Green parties just need to become a ‘Reform of the Left’ and we’ll double our support overnight. This ignores the fact that Reform’s anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, anti-climate brand of politics has the backing of the traditional media barons who have shaped British politics for decades, and now also the social media barons who have embraced the far-right and are trying to reshape politics across the world.

It also sidesteps the simple truth that it’s much easier to be a sensationalist liar than to offer real solutions to the crises people face. 

Greens can’t and shouldn’t try to be the ‘Reform of the Left’. That’s a glib soundbite with no bearing on the realities of Scottish or UK politics.

But it’s no reason to roll over and accept that circa 10% is as good as it gets for Green politics. 

We can't defeat creeping fascism or deliver eco-socialism at 10%.  Our approach needs to change to meet the scale of the threat.

There are two main fronts on which to fight Reform- economic and social justice. It's on economic justice that the Scottish Greens can and must lead that fight, because no one else will.

For all their faults, the SNP are the only other party to consistently defend immigrants and refugees. The Scottish Government is our ally when it comes to persuading people that their struggles are not caused by those who have come here from elsewhere.

What the SNP will not do is call out those actually at fault - the billionaires, landlords, tax evaders and other economic elites who have rigged the system in their own favour. That is the key role the Scottish Greens must play.

Greens must be the ones to point out that it's not immigrants causing housing shortages everywhere from Edinburgh to Arran, it's a system which means that the rich will almost certainly pay no tax if they buy a second property and use it as an Airbnb-style short term let.

And if we don’t point out that more and more of Scotland’s land is now owned via tax havens, no-one else will. We’re certainly the only ones willing to force votes in Parliament to actually end the loopholes which make this possible.

The list of economic injustices in Scotland is a long one. Just fixing the rigged tax system for residential property would take dozens of changes to the law (as I proposed in Parliament recently and summarised in a three-part blog here).

People are right to be angry at the scale of injustice in such a wealthy country. The Right prey on that to turn ordinary people against each other, whilst Centrists reject this anger entirely and put the blame back onto those who are struggling. 

They cannot accept that the system needs to change. They are quite happy with a capitalist status quo which is wrecking the planet and exploiting the vast majority of people, all so that an elite few can live lives of comfort and security.

A greater focus on economic justice doesn’t come at the expense of social justice. To mangle two famous quotes, you can’t have capitalism without racism, and you fight them both with solidarity.

Greens should continue our unequivocal solidarity with immigrants and refugees, because that is the right thing to do. We didn't win free bus travel for asylum seekers and the right for refugees to vote because it would grow our own support, we did it because vulnerable and marginalised people needed help and we were in the privileged position of being able to provide it.

But basing a 2026 election strategy on a general ‘anti-Reform’ message would be a huge mistake.

The SNP have already positioned themselves as Scotland’s anti-Reform party. If we put ourselves on the same ground, we will be squeezed. Like it or not, the incumbent Scottish Government is almost always going to be the more compelling choice for those who simply want to stop Faragism and don't mind how they do it. 

We experienced this in the 2019 European elections, when both the Scottish Greens and the SNP presented as the anti-Farage option. Our vote went up by 0.1%, theirs by 8.8%.

What Greens offer, but the SNP does not, is an honest answer about who is really at fault - and credible ideas to un-rig the system and make those economic elites pay their fair share. 

We have a track record as well. That's why high earners pay more tax in Scotland than anywhere else in the UK. It's why school meal debt here has been scrapped. It’s why young people get free bus travel, and why peak rail fares are about to be scrapped for good. These things didn't happen by themselves: Scottish Green MSPs delivered them.

To defeat Reform and tackle the real and deep problems facing people across the country, from the cost of living to accelerating climate breakdown, that vision of economic justice must be at the heart of our election campaign over the next eleven months.

Cover photo used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Credit to Owain Davies