Patrick Harvie has today announced – and not a moment too soon – that he will step down as co-leader of the Scottish Greens this summer. It will end his tenure as Holyrood’s longest-serving party chief after he clung onto the top job for almost 17 years. To mark the occasion, Mr S has compiled a list of Harvie’s worst moments to date…
Harvie’s net-zero hypocrisy
The Scottish Green co-leader has always been quick to take a pop at the Tories – even when he risked looking rather hypocritical himself. Raging that former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak had a ‘damn nerve’ to claim that delays to climate targets would benefit households, the eco-zealot took aim at a range of issues – including Sunak’s delays to the phase out of gas boilers and the ex-MP’s pledge to push back the ban on petrol and diesel vehicles to 2035. ‘We are so angry!’ Harvie exploded at the time. But when, on BBC radio in October 2023, the conversation turned to what the Scottish Greens would be discussing at their upcoming party conference, the party leader could only point to council tax and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Talk about taking your foot off the, um, zero-emission pedal…
Two-tier boilers
Speaking to the Beeb’s Laura Maciver in 2023, Harvie got himself in a tizzy over heat pumps. The Green co-leader protested that it ‘simply isn’t true’ his party were trying to outlaw gas boilers by 2030 – despite admitting their ‘gradual’ plan was to get rid of the things. When confronted by the affordability concerns many have about swapping their boilers out for heat pumps, Harvie cried indignantly: ‘People in right-wing politics and the media are misrepresenting the costs!’ His outburst came only moments after he confessed he still owned a gas boiler himself. Rules for thee, but not for me!
Expelling members who believe in ‘biological sex’
If readers cast their minds back to last May, they might remember the rather baffling revelation that Patrick Harvie’s barmy army ramped up its bizarre stance on gender politics – to the extent that it began expelling party members for declaring that ‘sex is a biological reality’. The move came after a handful of eco-activists signed the ‘Scottish Green Declaration for Women’s Sex-Based Rights’ in a pushback against their party’s attitude towards gender issues. The document’s 14 signatories were quickly accused of making the party less safe for trans members and breaking party rules – before they were pushed out of the group altogether for their scandalous actions on Harvie’s watch. So much for inclusivity, eh?
Refusal to accept the Cass report
The long-awaited review by Dr Hilary Cass on gender identity services was always going to prompt an outcry from the gender-obsessed Greens, but Harvie’s choice not to accept its existence as a valid scientific document left him looking downright ludicrous. Appearing on BBC Scotland last April, the party’s co-leader was quizzed on NHS Scotland’s decision to pause the use of puberty blockers on children after the publication of the Cass report, before being asked directly whether he accepted the findings of Dr Cass’s review. Harvie – himself not, in fact, a clinician – snootily told his interviewer that he had ‘seen far too many criticisms of it to be able to say that’, before telling MSPs a month later that recognising the report as a ‘valid scientific document’ was not ‘supportable’ by his party. Good heavens…
Losing his seat at the table
It only took beleaguered former first minister Humza Yousaf 13 months to see sense and kick the Scottish Greens out of government – but not before the eco-activists had managed to enact a fair bit of damage. Under Harvie’s watch, the deposit return scheme imploded spectacularly, leaving redundancies and debts of over £80 million in its wake. The controversial gender bill, backed by Harvie’s barmy army, would have housed rapists in women’s prisons. The dreaded fishing bans pushed by the group have been labelled ‘catastrophic’ for rural communities. And the environmentalists are also opposed to road building— despite Scotland’s most dangerous road still in desperate need of dualling. In the end, Yousaf sacked Harvie and his co-leader Lorna Slater from government and ended the Bute House Agreement between their parties before being forced out as first minister himself. Good riddance!
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