Scottish Greens: How you can help kick Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater out of the coalition – John McLellan

But now there is a chance to make a decisive contribution to the future governance of our poor, benighted nation, one which doesn’t mean waiting for Rishi Sunak to call the national plebiscite or sitting out two years until the next opportunity to change your MSPs. Nor do you need to wait for Humza Yousaf to come to his senses, which might be a very long wait indeed.

The downside is it could cost you £3, but surely that’s an investment worth making to encourage the Scottish Government to focus on real priorities and achievable targets, to abandon ruinous gesture policies and student politics, and pay more than lip service to business and wealth creation. That sounds like good value to me.

There’s a downside, however, which is that to take this once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the future, you will, however briefly, need to agree to be a member of the Scottish Greens, giving fleeting encouragement to a clutch of MSPs and councillors whose belief in level-headed practicality is in inverse proportion to their enthusiasm for biology denial and less-than-hidden endorsement of anti-semitism.

An unachievable promise

Yes, folks, according to the party’s website, becoming a member “gives you the right to vote in our open democratic structures”, which in the absence of any statement to the contrary should include an extraordinary general meeting sometime in May at which members will be asked to vote on whether to end the Bute House Agreement which keeps the Greens in coalition with the SNP and co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater in lucrative ministerial positions.

Get our weekly opinion newsletter for expert analysis from The Scotsman’s team of columnists

For the price of a high street coffee, you can, just this once, find common cause with climate catastrophists infuriated by the Scottish Government’s decision to ditch Nicola Sturgeon’s “world-leading” (in other words, utterly unachievable) promise to reduce greenhouse emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 and vote to pack Mr Harvie and Ms Slater off to the backbenches, kissing goodbye to their £33,989 ministerial salaries in the process. What’s not to like? OK, so your monthly subscription might turn into two payments if it takes them till after May to get the vote organised, but that’s still got to be a bargain.

If there is a rule which prevents new members taking part in such votes then it’s not obvious from the website so, given they place much store in being lovely, honest people, surely they’ll honour such an unambiguous promise? Think about what you could achieve. If you live in a fishing community, those highly protected marine areas for which Ms Slater was so keen will be history once and for all.

Senseless opposition to nuclear power

If you work in agriculture, so too will her plan to create more national parks, bringing with them an unwanted and hideously expensive layer of bureaucracy in the name of biodiversity. It might halt the onward march of onshore wind turbines which are despoiling some of Scotland’s most sensitive landscapes. It might even help the SNP see reason and dump its senseless opposition to nuclear power, the lack of which will make our energy supply vulnerable on the days when the wind doesn’t blow. You could help kill off the Heating in Buildings Bill with which Mr Harvie is planning to render thousands of older homes unsellable by imposing impossible insulation and energy rules, so ruining the householders and wrecking the property markets along the way.

But best of all, you can do your bit to ensure Mr Harvie – who dismisses the report from one of Britain’s most eminent paediatricians exposing the lack of evidence behind prescribing puberty blockers to children without effective mental-health screening, and who refuses to condemn Green members who say Dr Hilary Cass is guilty of “social murder” as part of a transphobic “culture war” − will never again hold ministerial responsibility.

Sadly, someone like me will probably be spotted when the local branch receives the online application form, but if you’ve never been a councillor or a newspaper columnist, then they need never know you are an entryist like the Trotskyites and Tories who joined the Labour party in 2015 to vote for Jeremy Corbyn. If you’re an SNP supporter, here’s your chance to stop your dog being wagged by a Green tail, which attracted under five per cent of the vote in 2021.

Ill-considered climate schemes

If you are a Conservative, Lib Dem or Labour voter, then the end of the Bute House Agreement should compel Mr Yousaf to find common ground and compromises with other parties which might just have a chance of reflecting public opinion, presuming Labour and Lib Dems can disentangle themselves from the pressure group agendas in which the SNP has become so ensnared and reacquaint themselves with the popular mood.

By rights, the SNP dumping their climate change target – “unforgiveable in the face of a climate catastrophe to row back on a commitment to reach net zero”, according to Humza Yousaf when the UK Government did something similar seven months ago – should also end the imposition of ill-considered schemes associated with it. In Edinburgh, a low-emission zone which creates neighbouring high-emission zones, grandiose plans like Living Steets and City Centre Transformation, and pumping millions into vanity tram projects, are driven by the insane goal of hitting full net zero by 2030, clearly even less achievable than the abandoned SNP-Green pledge, as it was when approved in December 2021.

Politicians have difficulty in understanding that setting unachievable goals on the altar of “ambition” for the sake of cheap headlines and leaflet fodder is ultimately worthless, so maybe signing up to kick the Scottish Greens out of power might help. Your country needs you.