(Image: GordonTerris/Herald&Times)
The Scottish Greens co-leader Ross Greer has told how his party faced significant financial problems as it prepared to fight this year's Holyrood election.
Mr Greer lifted the lid on the funding problems which publicly came to light earlier this month when it emerged his party had to borrow £150,000 from the Green Party of England and Wales in April.
Tomorrow, at the start of their two-day conference in Inverness, the Greens will debate whether party structures should be overhauled in a bid to help ease financial difficulties as it heads into another round of elections in May with the local government elections taking place then.
It will then face the General Election in 2029 - if a snap election is not called earlier - where the Greens are hopeful of netting their first Scottish seats at Westminster after the party saw a record 15 MSPs elected to Holyrood in May including its first two constituency seats, taking Glasgow Southside, Nicola Sturgeon's former seat, and Edinburgh Central, ousting Cabinet minister Angus Robertson.
Read More:
The strongly-worded motion to be debated by members heading to Eden Court states that the party was "far behind the goal of amassing a reserve of £500,000" as it prepared for the election.
It goes on: "The party was unprepared and disorganised during a crucial election and it might be time to thoroughly review its structure."
Speaking to The Herald ahead of conference, Mr Greer, who was elected party co-leader along with Gillian Mackay last year, was asked about the party's money woes.
"It is fair to say that when Gillian and I became co-leaders last year the party did not have the financial resources required to run the election campaign," he said.
"We worked exceptionally hard alongside a team of volunteers to secure those resources. The Green Party of England and Wales very kindly loaned us money. We will be paying that back and we have started paying that back to them.
"We were also able to secure a huge amount in donations relative to what we had before from our members and supporters - that came in the form of £5, £10, £20 at time - and in the end we were able to deliver a campaign that elected 15 Green MSPs , doubling our seats in Parliament and winning our first constituencies.
"But it is a challenge if you don't have corporate backing and people writing you six figure cheques. The situation last year was challenging."
He added: "We are not a party backed by billionaires or have big corporate sponsors. There are no owners of private bus companies writing us £150,000 cheques every couple of months [businessmen Sandy and James Easdale gave Labour £300,000], like the Labour party had before the election.
"Our financial support comes overwhelmingly from members and supporters putting in whatever they can a month."
Mr Greer said he will not be supporting the motion calling for a review of party structures arguing plans were already in place to improve its finances.
Gillian Mackay and Ross Greer were elected Scottish Greens co-leaders last year. (Image: PA)
He said the party's executive had over the last year changed how it managed its finances with a dedicated working group set up to focus on fundraising with Mr Greer sitting on the group.
"We are now in a far better financial position than we were last year," he added.
"We raised the money to run an exceptional and groundbreaking campaign and we are in the process of doing that all over again for the council elections."
He went on to say that "the single biggest difference" made to party finances in the last year has been the growth in party membership, which has risen from around 7000 members, when he and Ms Mackay became co-leaders, to 11,000 members.
"That is folk who are paying whatever they can afford every month or every year. That is what is making a huge difference," he said.
Read More:
- Manivannan: Abuse reinforced my belief to continue as MSP
- MSP reveals battle with 'excruciating and invisible' illness
- Greens MSP Holly Bruce on why she won't talk to Reform
Mr Greer told The Herald that many of the new members had joined his party had previously been SNP members or supporters but had switched to the Greens after Nicola Sturgeon's resignation as SNP leader and First Minister in 2023.
He said those members would describe themselves as former "Sturgeonites", who would have been on the left of the SNP on social issues such as gender self-identification as well as on climate change.
"Most of our members have not been members of any other party before, but there has been a really interesting trend over the last decade.
"Post referendum that 2014 to 2016 period, one in ten members of the Scottish Green Party had previously been a member of the Labour Party. Now it's far more common for someone to have previously been in the SNP," he said.
"Hundreds of former SNP members resigned on the spot from their party and joined ours off the back of the collapse of the Bute House Agreement. We experienced a surge of around 500 people back in 2024 and each time the SNP takes a step further away from what we would describe as Nicola Sturgeon's progressive leadership, we see a little bump in our membership."
Ross Greer said the collapse of the Bute House Agreement led to an upsurge in Scottish Greens members. (Image: JEFF J MITCHELL)
The Scottish Greens co-leader went on to say that with the SNP softening its opposition to new North Sea drilling, with senior figures welcoming the Labour Government's go ahead this week for exploration of the Jackdaw gas field, his party could see another membership increase.
"The SNP and the Greens in government adopted a position of presumption against new North Sea oil and gas fields," he said.
"We cannot afford to open up new fields and burn them. It will make keeping global warming to two degrees impossible. We have seen this summer five heat waves in the UK, premature deaths attributed to those heat waves, homes destroyed by wildfires. The breakdown is happening.
"A lot of people in the SNP were very proud to be in a party that was on the right side of climate science. I know a lot of those people are feeling pretty distressed. Some of them are continuing to stay and fight within their own party, others have joined the Greens. others have left party politics."
With the party conference over on Sunday afternoon and Holyrood returning from recess, Mr Greer is due to start negotiations with the Scottish Government over next year's Budget.
Deputy First Minister and finance secretary Jenny Gilruth is due to set out her plans in December to MSPs and in previous years the Scottish Greens have been heavily involved in talks and deal making to allow the minority government's financial plans to get passed in Holyrood.
The Scottish Government is facing a looming £5 billion blackhole in its finances by the end of the current parliament with the Scottish Greens preparing a list of demands for extra "wealth taxes" to raise additional revenue to avoid significant public spending cuts.
"With 15 MSPs we can deliver so much more," he said.
"We will engage in Budget negotiations in good faith," said Mr Greer citing the overall demand for the Greens will be measures to alleviate the cost of living for households.
"But if we cannot find common ground we will be a robust and effective opposition."
He added: "There is a whole range of options we will be putting on the table. We tend to take the approach of putting out a broad menu of options to the government. We go into the talks with a long shopping list. The SNP can see our manifesto."
He said the expansion of the £2 bus fare cap to the whole of Scotland "as quickly as possible" would be among the demands. The Scottish Government has promising that the policy would be brought in nationally by the end of the current parliament in 2031.
A mansion tax and a tax on private jets were proposed by the Greens and accepted by the Scottish Government in last year's Budget with work ongoing to for the policies to be implemented.
The Greens also want the government to bring in a new tax on vacant and derelict land with the new tax being devolved to councils as a way of allowing them to raise additional revenue.
"The councils would get an immediate injection of money but the idea is to incentivise the owners of these empty and derelict sites to either develop them or to sell them to someone else who will," he added.
However, Mr Greer has ruled out proposing any increases to income tax.
"We don't want to see any backward step on income tax," he said.
"The income tax system that Scotland has right now is as a result of the changes that we made and results in around £1.8 bn more being raised every year for public services than would otherwise be the case....We recognise though that the only way to raise substantial amounts of additional money from income tax would be to off the backs of low and average-waged workers.
"And that is not want we want to see. We want to see a shift of tax from work to wealth. There are a small number of obscenely wealthy people in this country who are not currently paying their fair share.
"The way you get them to pay their fair share isn't by income tax, it's with wealth taxes. That is the big area of focus for the Greens now."