What would I do differently?

The Scottish Greens believe in radical democracy. It’s how we’d organise society and it's how we (try to) organise our party. 

I’ve already written about the structural and cultural problems which currently make us more of a radical bureaucracy than a radical democracy. Solving those isn’t just down to the co-leaders, but I’ve lodged a number of motions proposing changes to our constitution at this year’s autumn conference. I’ll come back to them in a later post.

For now though, I want to share with members some of what I would do with the co-leader role itself and the areas where that would be different to previous co-leaders.

In a nutshell, I want to give our party a clear sense of shared purpose and direction.

As per our constitution, the co-leaders of the Scottish Greens have three main responsibilities:

1. Leading the public perception of the SGP

2. Acting as chief spokespeople of the SGP

3. Providing political leadership to the SGP

It’s the third point, political leadership, that I want to concentrate on here.

Over the last year in particular it has felt like we have lacked a shared sense of purpose across the party. Clear political leadership from the co-leaders, with the final decisions made by SGP Council, can provide that direction.

So, if elected co-leader I will bring a draft political strategy to Council at its December meeting and if that is agreed I will work to make sure it is delivered. 

These strategy papers should be a regular feature in the co-leaders’ reports to Council and I am happy to commit to making that the case.

Council has responsibility for deciding on party strategy, but it is made up of people already running other bits of the party and with a different set of attendees at every meeting. It is not a body which can easily produce a strategy from scratch.

The co-leaders cannot dictate party strategy, but they can put proposals forward to Council. I believe that is the most effective way to provide political leadership whilst maintaining our commitment to radical democracy and collective decision-making. 

There is certainly an urgent need for clarity on our strategy ahead of next year’s election.

The details of that strategy are for discussion and debate in more private party spaces, but I’ve already outlined where I think we need to position ourselves and what we should focus on.

In short, we must recognise how angry people are at politics, direct that anger at those truly at fault (billionaires, greedy landlords etc, not trans people or asylum seekers) and give hope that another Scotland is possible.

We must combine our unapologetically positive vision for society with tangible and specific ideas to help people here and now, like universal free bus travel.

And we must focus on delivering that transformative change ourselves, not just criticising other parties for refusing to do so.

In short, I want us to all get behind a shared strategy and focus our efforts on delivering it. The contents of that strategy should be vigorously debated, but someone needs to kickstart the debate. That is the role of our co-leaders.

Agreeing on our strategy is critical if we’re to achieve the breakthrough Green results in 2026 and 2027 that I know we’re capable of.