In Scotland this week, we have had the highest number of daily Covid cases ever. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has reacted by announcing a possible return of harsher restrictions.
This announcement correlates with a significant dip in her approval ratings. Add that to the SNP’s failures on education, healthcare, local government funding, and of course drug deaths, and it is surprising that the First Minister has not seen her numbers fall below Keir Starmer’s.
In the wake of all these problems, the SNP has announced a formal cooperation agreement with the Scottish Greens. The party that spends so much of its time talking about the democratic will of the Scottish people is about to put a party that won just 8 per cent of the vote in the last election into government.
The cooperation agreement might seem pointless to many, given the fact that the Scottish Greens usually vote with the SNP anyway. But the agreement makes the parties’ cooperation official by formalising the pro-independence majority that the SNP keeps insisting the Scottish Parliament has, and by putting two Green MSPs into the Cabinet as junior ministers.
The SNP and the Greens have agreed to consult each other on proposed legislation, while a few matters remain excluded from the agreement, including the NATO membership of a theoretical independent Scotland, the legal status of prostitution, and aviation policy.
This agreement will have devastating consequences for Scotland. Stephen Kerr MSP, Chief Whip of the Scottish Conservative Party, wrote to me about this deal, saying that the Scottish Greens ‘want to shut down Scotland’s oil and gas production so we have to buy oil and gas from overseas instead just so they can boast they’ve shut down the sector, and their war on the motorist will see working people having to stump up far more just to move around their own country.’
The Scottish Greens’ ideological commitment to the destruction of the oil and gas sector in favour of unreliable renewables spells bad news for Scotland now that the Greens officially have a place in government.
Thousands of jobs will be lost in Scotland, for little, if any, benefit to the environment. As Stephen Kerr points out, shutting down the North Sea oil and gas sector will not stop Scotland using fossil fuels; it will mean that Scotland has to import oil and gas from countries with fewer regulations.
Extraction will be done in a less environmentally conscious way, and more fuel will be used to transport the oil and gas to Scotland. Jobs will be lost, and the economy will suffer, all for the optics that make the Greens look successful and the SNP look (superficially) better on the environment ahead of COP26 in Glasgow.
The SNP has never been great with money, but they at least accept the need for some degree of budget management. The Scottish Greens, on the other hand, are big fans of modern monetary theory (MMT) – a fringe idea that argues that governments in control of their own currency need not be constrained by budgetary pressures as they can simply print more money.
As Dr Juan Castaneda argues in a paper for the Institute of Economic Affairs, MMT would lead to entrenched inflation and a loss of control over money; thus it is unsustainable. This would only be a problem in Scotland after secession from the UK, but a party that is sold on something as radical as MMT, especially in a newly independent country, with a new currency and a massive debt burden, should not have a place in government.
The tendency of the Scottish Greens, as well as many other left-wing environmental groups, is to argue that economic growth is incompatible with environmental sustainability. These ideas could easily influence the SNP to make terrible, anti-capitalist decisions that negatively impact the Scottish people.
The whole point of this agreement, really, is to ensure that the nationalists gain the pro-independence majority that the SNP could not secure on its own at the last election. While the Greens would mostly vote with SNP anyway deal or no deal, they may now have a stronger case for a referendum – even though the Prime Minister has repeatedly refused to grant one, and the majority of Scots would likely still vote against separation when it came down to it.
However, it looks likely that this agreement could, if anything, actually weaken the case for Scottish independence. Former First Minister Alex Salmond this week accused the SNP and the Greens of ‘student politics’ over North Sea oil, arguing that the opponents of the nationalist movement could use the betrayal of the oil and gas sector in Scotland in the case against separation, potentially pushing people away from that movement.
Speaking of Alex Salmond, this cooperation agreement could benefit him. A formal alliance with the ideologically intractable Greens could bring a dangerous leftward shift for the SNP, which could push many of its members into the awaiting arms of Salmond’s Alba Party.
As Stephen Kerr also pointed out to me ‘The Scottish Green Party have never been near government up until now for good reason. They are incapable of being pragmatic. They are painfully ideological. As we’ve only recently seen in former Green MSP Andy Wightman’s blog, they are intolerant of people voicing different points of view even within their own party. Their treatment of Andy was utterly disgraceful and smacked of unbearable intolerance.’
The Andy Wightman story is available on his blog. This story highlights the Greens’ lack of tolerance, their aversion to freedom of speech and thought, and the contentious nature of the debate over women’s sex-based rights and the reforms of the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland, where the Green Party is in favour of self-identification, along with other controversial reforms.
The SNP has shown little tolerance of dissent or affinity for free speech itself, but the inclusion of the Greens in government will solidify the SNP’s position in the gender debate, which could well be off-putting for many of its members, especially if the Alba Party offers a pro-independence alternative.
As for the Greens, this non-coalition coalition might not be such a good idea. The British coalition government instituted unpopular austerity measures, as well as the much-maligned bedroom tax. David Cameron and George Osbourne were not the most relatable or likeable figures, but in 2015, it was the Liberal Democrats who paid the price electorally for the decisions of a predominantly Conservative government.
If the First Minister finds herself stuck with a failure that she cannot blame on Westminster, the Greens could make an awfully good back-up scapegoat, especially on environmental issues. And if the SNP stands in the way of the Green Party’s environmental agenda, or paints the Greens as being responsible for the government’s failures on the environment, then perhaps the Scottish Liberal Democrats with their new leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton, could offer a new home for disaffected Green voters.
This cooperation agreement is really just opportunistic bluster ahead of COP26.
The SNP might be doing it to demonstrate more support for the referendum than actually exists, to score environmental points, or perhaps ‘woke’ points. The Greens are doing it to get into government. It may not be any worse than if they had not formalised their agreement, but it certainly will not make things any better in Scotland.
This agreement is a threat to industry, jobs, and the economy, and will ensure more constitutional battles take place at the expense of post-Covid recovery. It could end up being bad for both of the parties involved, but those effects may not become clear until 2024, by which point a lot of damage will already have been done.
