Scottish Greens leadership under pressure from members on council cuts

Philip Stott

Having been effectively kicked out of the Scottish government by former first minister Humza Yousef earlier this year, speculation has been rife that the Scottish Greens will refuse to vote for the SNP budget at Holyrood.

Recently the Greens co-leaders have been shifting ground. Now saying they are open to backing the budget if certain guarantees are met. A demand to end to the cuts policies of Swinney and co? Not if Patrick Harvie, Lorna Slater and Ross Greer can avoid it.

This issue played out recently at the Scottish Greens conference in Greenock. The leadership wanted a motion passed that would commit Green MSPs to oppose a budget that allocated “anything less than £4.7 billion to climate and nature causes.”

Vague commitments to a “fairer and greener” society were included, alongside ideas like “progressive taxation”

An amendment to the leadership’s motion was tabled by members, including a councillor, that sought to include voting against the budget if it cut funding to local government.

The backdrop to this of course is Green MSPs support for SNP budgets for years that routinely included cuts to councils.

Desperate to avoid being saddled with this commitment, the leadership wanted the amendment to be treated as “coming from the floor” of conference. According to the Scottish Greens conference arrangements that would mean if 10 people opposed the amendment it could not be heard or debated.

The movers of the amendments proposed the entire conference agenda be thrown out and replaced by a new one that would allow for the amendments to be heard as of right.

Conference voted in favour of this, with Harvie, Slater and Greer voting against. In the end, conference also backed the amendment to the budget motion.

In theory this now means that, according to one of the movers of the amendment, “our Green MSPs are now tied to voting against any Budget that does cut local authority budgets”.

However, many Scottish budgets hear claims by ministers of increased funding for local government, which in reality represents cuts to core spending. So the demand for no cuts really has to be one for real terms increases for councils.

With the Westminster budget likely to take an axe to public services, and the knock-on effect of further cuts to the Scottish budget, the Scottish Greens leadership are already saying “we don’t like to use the language of red lines”.

Scottish Greens councillors also have a record of voting for cuts in local government.

We would encourage activists in the Scottish Greens who want to see a genuine anti-cuts political alternative to discuss with Socialist Party Scotland and Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.

The setting of no cuts/needs budgets can be achieved through political will and mass struggle, but not with the approach taken by the leadership of the Scottish Greens. That’s why the building of a new mass working class party is so crucial in Scotland.