John Ferry John Ferry

The SNP-Green alliance is a victory for the cranks

Scottish Greens co-leader, Patrick Harvie (photo: Getty)

The SNP’s nationalist outriders, the Scottish Green party, are reported to be within touching distance of agreeing the terms of a formal cooperation agreement that will see them enter government for the first time. What will this mean for Scotland and its governing party?

On the face of it, not a great deal. Some Green MSPs (the party has seven, including co-leaders Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie) will get ministerial posts but will have minimal impact on SNP policy, which will likely remain tightly controlled by Sturgeon and her inner sanctum. The SNP will hope that the optics of hooking up with the Greens will boost their environmental credentials in the build-up to the Cop26 conference in Glasgow. This matters for a party that favours style over substance and narrative over progress, but in the real world it will change nothing.

On the constitution, the fundamentals won’t have changed. Boris Johnson can credibly continue to say ‘now is not the time’ for another referendum while opinion polls show a majority of Scots neither want independence nor another vote anytime soon. The Greens in government won’t change that.

There could be other consequences to bringing the Greens into the fold though. It will see advocates of modern monetary theory (MMT) in government for the first time, which could have implications for Sturgeon when it comes to building a credible economic case for secession; her ability to maintain authority over the nationalist movement; and perhaps even on internal SNP party discipline.

The Green’s MMT argument is based on a fantasy

Scottish Green co-leader Lorna Slater is a big fan of MMT, the theory that countries in control of their own currency don’t have to worry about budget constraints, they just have to control inflation using tax and spend powers while maximising economic activity. In March, for instance, Slater tweeted: ‘Economies do have limits, but if you have your own currency, money isn’t one.’

In certain respects MMT provides a useful (although not original) way to think about how state finances work, in that it establishes a framework which demonstrates how governments have a lot of budget flexibility.

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