Alert readers will recall that among the many tirades of abuse this site has recently been subjected to for suggesting the idea of a 2021 Holyrood list party to compete for seats currently won by Unionists, one of the main themes was “We already have a reliable pro-indy alternative to the SNP in the form of the Scottish Greens”.
Now, that argument misses the point by the hugest distance imaginable, but let’s not get into it here, because something more important is happening much sooner.
As we approach a 2019 Westminster general election in which the number of pro-indy MPs returned could be absolutely crucial, we were alerted to the number of candidates the Scottish Greens are intending to stand this coming December.
So it’s perhaps worth considering the possible consequences.
So far the party has announced candidates for 16 of the 59 seats. More may follow. The news was announced by the Green-friendly The National a few days ago with a strikingly positive spin:
The paper declared that the Greens were only going to stand against the Tories in one seat, supposedly maximising the SNP’s chances of capturing it. The seat in question, Stirling, is certainly a vulnerable one, with unpleasant Tory MP Stephen Kerr defending a majority of just 148.
Readers may observe that in such circumstances, a Green candidate could in fact easily make all the difference between the SNP taking the seat or not, and leaving Kerr – a Mormon opposed to equal marriage – in place for another five years, an outcome that it might seem surprising the super-duper-LGBT Greens were willing to risk.
(The National made particular play of the fact that the Greens wouldn’t be standing against Douglas Ross in Moray, but Ross is defending a majority of over 4,000 and the Greens didn’t fight the seat in 2017. The only time they ever contested Moray they got just 1,345 votes.)
But wait. If the Greens are standing in 16 seats and only one of them is Tory-held, who are they competing against in the other 15?
The paper only actually identifies 15 seats in total including Stirling, not 16. let’s have a look at their list.
DUNFERMLINE AND WEST FIFE
Held by: SNP
Majority: 844 (down from 10,352)
Green candidate in 2017: No, but got 1195 votes in 2015)
EAST KILBRIDE, STRATHAVEN AND LESMAHAGOW
Held by: SNP
Majority: 3866 (down from 16,527)
Green candidate last time: No
EDINBURGH EAST
Held by: SNP
Majority: 3425 (down from 9106)
Green candidate last time: No, but got 2809 votes in 2015
EDINBURGH NORTH AND LEITH
Held by: SNP
Majority: 1625 (down from 5597)
Green candidate last time: Green candidate last time: Yes, 1727 votes.
(Also got 3140 votes in 2015)
EDINBURGH SOUTH
Held by: Labour
Majority: 15,514
Green candidate last time: No, but got 2090 votes in 2015
EDINBURGH SOUTH WEST
Held by: SNP
Majority 1097 (down from 8135)
Green candidate last time: No, but got 1965 votes in 2015
FALKIRK
Held by: SNP
Majority: 4923 (down from 19,701)
Green candidate last time: Yes (908 votes)
GLASGOW CENTRAL
Held by: SNP
Majority: 2267 (down from 7662)
Green candidate last time: No, but got 1559 votes in 2015
GLASGOW NORTH
Held by: SNP
Majority: 1060 (down from 9295)
Green candidate last time: Yes (3251 votes)
GLASGOW SOUTH
Held by: SNP
Majority: 2027 (down from 12,269)
Green candidate last time: No, but got 1431 in 2015.
KIRKCALDY AND COWDENBEATH
Held by: Labour
Majority: 259
Green candidate last time: No
LINLITHGOW AND EAST FALKIRK
Held by: SNP
Majority: 2919 (down from 12,934)
Green candidate last time: No
LIVINGSTON
Held by: SNP
Majority: 3878 (down from 16,843)
Green candidate last time: No
STIRLING
Held by: Con
Majority: 148
Green candidate last time: No, but got 1606 votes in 2015.
WEST DUNBARTONSHIRE
Held by: SNP
Majority: 2288 (down from 14,171)
Green candidate last time: No
We’re told, but haven’t yet been able to confirm, that the 16th seat a Green candidate has been selected for is Perth And North Perthshire:
PERTH AND NORTH PERTHSHIRE
Held by: SNP
Majority: 21 (down from 9641)
Green candidate last time: No, but got 1146 votes in 2015.
Of those 16 seats, the Greens would be going up against an SNP incumbent in 13. All are seats in which the SNP’s majority was slashed heavily in 2017, and only two of the seats had Green candidates that year, so most of the challenges will be new.
In nine of the seats – Dunfermline, Edinburgh East, Edinburgh North, Edinburgh South West, Glasgow Central, Glasgow South, Kirkcaldy, Perth and Stirling – it looks highly likely that a Green candidate could make the difference between the SNP taking the seat and not. In several cases the Greens stood candidates in 2015 whose votes, if repeated in 2019, would be enough to overturn the SNP’s majority in 2017.
Among the most vulnerable are Pete Wishart in Perth & NP (majority of just 21 and a Green 2015 vote 1100), Joanna Cherry in Edinburgh SW (majority barely 1000, Green 2015 vote of over 2000), Deidre Brock in Edinburgh N&L (majority 1625, Green 2015 vote 3100) and Douglas Chapman (majority 844, Green 2015 vote 1200), three of whom would lose their seats to Labour with Wishart’s going Tory.
Brock is especially vulnerable as EN&L is a three-way SNP-Lab-Con marginal highly susceptible to tactical voting – the Tories were within 2000 of Labour in 2017. And we suspect that the Greens would view the ousting of gender-critical feminist Cherry with unmixed delight, as would the SNP leadership.
She’d be replaced by a Labour candidate who today posted an image depicting herself spraying bleach in Cherry’s face, accompanied by a tears-of-laughter emoji – and who ironically got her candidateship through the Jo Cox leadership programme.
(Hoole is a GMB union rep from Shepton Mallet, just a few miles down the road from Bath. Maybe it’s something in the Somerset air that makes people vile, eh?)
Tommy Sheppard in Edinburgh East (whose majority is just 600 more than the 2015 Green candidate got) and Alison Thewliss in Glasgow Central (with a majority only 700 higher than the 2015 Green vote) will also be looking over their shoulders especially nervously at the “allies” who could put their chances in jeopardy and let two more Labour MPs in.
The Greens, of course, are perfectly entitled to stand in any constituencies they like. But they have absolutely no chance whatever of winning any of them (their strongest performance in either 2015 or 2017 was in Glasgow North, where Patrick Harvie still got less than 10% of the vote), so it’d be entirely a vanity exercise and could result in serious damage to the number of pro-indy MPs returned with a mandate to demand a second independence referendum.
The SNP currently have 35 MPs, which is 59% of the Scottish total. If they were to lose just six – a highly plausible scenario on the numbers above – and make no gains they’d drop to 29, which critically would be less than half.
The WORST-case scenario for a Wings party in any reasonable fact-based model was a net pro-indy loss of ONE seat, making no difference to any indy majority. And the circumstances for even that outcome were vanishingly unlikely. In all other feasible outcomes there was either no difference or a significant net pro-indy gain.
The Scottish Greens contesting 16 (or more) seats next month, however, could all too easily turn a majority of pro-indy MPs at Westminster into a minority, both destroying any sort of moral mandate and extinguishing any lingering chance of holding leverage over a second indyref. And all for NO possible gain.
Supporters of independence – and especially those citing the Greens as an argument against a Wings party – might find themselves with cause to ponder who their friends and enemies really are.
