Morning Call: SNP given the Bute

Could the Scottish government fall?

Freddie

Good morning. Could the power-sharing agreement between the Greens and the SNP collapse? Thoughts below.

Then, for our paid tier, George has an intriguing report on whether the Greens could cause problems for Labour. And Ben looks at why even just one migrant being sent to Rwanda could be a surprisingly big win for the government.

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Three months before Glasgow hosted Cop26 in 2021, the Greens signed the Bute House power-sharing agreement with the SNP and entered government in Scotland. That agreement is now in the balance.

Green Party members and senior councillors pressured the leadership on Friday to hold an emergency meeting on whether to remain in government with the SNP. The trigger was threefold: the decision to scrap a 2030 target to reduce carbon emissions by 75 per cent; no longer prescribing puberty blockers at Scotland’s only gender clinic following the Cass review; and the freeze of council tax, which will help the richest the most. The grimy compromise that coalitions demand has pushed the membership too far.

Patrick Harvie, the Greens co-leader, has said that he doesn’t know whether members will vote to keep the Greens in government next month. He is desperate to remain. His argument to members is that it’s better to be inside the tent influencing decisions than outside with your virtue intact. As a junior government minister, he would have to support legislation repealing the Scottish government’s 2030 carbon reduction target or resign, placing his own leadership in jeopardy.

The leader at most risk, though, could be Humza Yousaf. As I reported in Morning Call last week, some senior SNP figures at Westminster have been speculating for months now about trying to remove Yousaf if the SNP does poorly in the general election. Kate Forbes, who lost to Yousaf in the leadership contest, told the New Statesman in December that the Bute House Agreement “should be repealed and the SNP should operate again as a one-party minority government”, as it did from 2007 to 2011 under Alex Salmond. She said:

“We were elected on a SNP manifesto not a Green Party manifesto or the Bute House Agreement. Nearly all the issues that have lost us support in the last year are found in the Bute House Agreement and not in the SNP manifesto. I see it particularly acutely with the economy and in rural Scotland, as the Greens appear to want to overregulate rural communities out of existence and hike taxes to a rate that will ultimately reduce public revenue.”

The question now is whether a chain of events – from a Green Party revolt to the collapse of the Bute House Agreement to the destabilisation of Yousaf’s leadership – could lead to the Scottish First Minister being ousted a year into the job.

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Freddie’s picks

Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister of Scotland, has written a lively and intriguing review of Salman Rushdie’s book Knife. I can’t help but read it as an attack on the SNP’s authoritarian hate-speech laws.

What’s behind the rise in people not working? Anoosh explains the rise of economic inactivity.

Taylor Swift is a cultural behemoth. Anna reviews the pop star’s new album.

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It’s been three years since Uber and GMB signed their recognition agreement. Together they have delivered the first pension in the gig economy. But what is the future of work in 21st-century Britain? And how do we combine autonomy and flexibility with security and representation? Join our panel of experts for a New Statesman podcast produced in collaboration with Uber, to discuss all of this and more.

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Should Labour fear the Greens?

George Eaton

Bristol is not a city that disguises its radicalism. The walls are festooned with street art and graffiti (Banksy is a former resident). The local Patagonia store features placards declaring “Net Zero is Not Enough”, “Frack Off” and “There’s No Planet B”. Clues that the city may soon elect the UK’s second-ever Green MP surround you.

An MRP poll in February by Electoral Calculus projected that the Greens would win the new Bristol Central seat with 52 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 39 per cent. The woman bidding to oust the shadow culture secretary, Thangam Debbonaire, is Carla Denyer, the Greens’ co-leader and one of 24 city councillors (making them the largest party). 

“People say ‘well, I usually vote Labour’ and then they trail off in a sad tone of voice,” Denyer – a lively, bright-eyed 38-year-old with a pixie haircut – recalled when we met at a café in the city centre that played Radiohead and Pink Floyd.

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