The Scottish Green party are often accused of promoting ‘student politics’ so it is perhaps no surprise they are fielding a 20-year-old social policy student, Cameron Eadie, in the forthcoming Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election. What is a surprise is that they are standing at all. They’ve never stood here before. Indeed, Greens tend to avoid contesting constituency elections since they generally do rather badly, having only around 8 per cent of the popular vote in 2021.
What mischief is the ‘wee green man’, Patrick Harvie, and his band of stop oil disrupters up to now, wonder SNP insiders. Haven’t the Greens caused enough trouble recently? The SNP government is still picking up the pieces after the collapse of Green minister Lorna Slater’s disastrous recycling scheme. Humza Yousaf also had to step in to halt the Green-inspired Highly Protected Marine Areas policy after a revolt by Highland fishing communities.
SNP election strategists worry that the Greens could split the independence vote in Rutherglen.
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