Wielding power to turn Holyrood green

A YEAR ago, PATRICK HARVIE was the rising star of the Scottish Green Party which had seven seats in the Scottish Parliament and was aiming for at least ten at the election.

Now he is just one of two Green MSPs in the parliament, both of whom are still coping with the fall-out from the disastrous election result.

But with the SNP government having to battle for every vote in a minority parliament, Mr Harvie and his colleague, Robin Harper, have become much more influential than the seven MSPs they had this time last year.

The Scottish Government needs at least the tacit approval of the Greens to get its budget through next week.

Mr Harvie and Mr Harper do now really have the power to effect change. The 34-year-old is one of a new breed of Green political activists to have broken into mainstream politics. He has helped to ditch the traditional image of Greens as affable amateurs with a passion for the environment by becoming a professional politician the moment he joined the cause.

The environment is forcing its way to the top of the political agenda in Scotland and across the world, and at last Mr Harvie has the chance to influence the debate.

So what is he going to do about the budget and how is he going to force the Scottish Government to listen? What does he think of the Lewis wind-farm development and does he believe the Scottish Government is as green as it claims to be?

Q & A: PATRICK HARVIE

This time last year, you were part of a Green parliamentary team of seven; now there are only two of you. How hard has it been to adapt to that?

To be honest, I found it very hard at the beginning. It was a real shock. I didn't expect the result we got.

It's in the nature of a democratic election that you take what you get, you say thanks very much, you get on with it. But I had never been in a situation of having to spend an intense period trying to figure out where we go with policy, where we go with relationships with other parties and, at the same time, having to make lots of my friends and colleagues redundant.

It was a difficult period. I think as we moved on we found a very constructive niche, and we have been able to exercise the influence that circumstances have given us in a constructive way.

What do you put it down to – why was the Green vote squeezed?

I think (it was] a host of different factors. It was a close election, no-one quite knew which party was going to come out on top, and in a close two-horse race smaller parties are always going to be squeezed.

We had the first really serious, concerted regional vote campaign by the SNP – the "Alex Salmond for First Minister" slogan, which I suspect won't be allowed again.

But in 2003 we had an effective regional vote campaign, and it worked. Within the rules you seek the advantage, we sought that in 2003 and we got it. (The SNP] sought that this time round and they got it.

I think the ballot paper didn't help. It was clearly designed with at least a thought of trying to do down the smaller parties, and I would probably own up and say our own campaign could have been more imaginative.

I certainly don't place all the blame on circumstances beyond our control.

Do you think there was a feeling that you had seven MSPs before but you hadn't really done much?

No. I really don't agree with that. I don't think the 2007 result was an indication that people didn't want Greens elected.

What I do take it as an indication of is that, overwhelmingly, people wanted a change of government. I even know lifelong Labour Party activists who are still voting Labour, but who were ready for a change of government.

Against circumstances like that, smaller parties are always going to get squeezed. The fact that we got more councillors elected than we predicted indicates that, in those areas, people wanted to get Greens elected and the single transferable vote system allows for that.

Where we were organised, where we were active in local communities, was where we held on to our vote.

That's one of the lessons for our party: to make sure the party is ready to fight an election at a local level.

With the parliamentary arithmetic as tight as it is now, having two seats seems actually to give you more power than you had with seven MSPs. How do you intend to use that power?

Carefully and constructively. As you have seen over the last eight months or so, there have been times when we have voted with opposition parties.

For example, on Edinburgh trams and the Glasgow Housing Association, which was hugely important in my region, we have taken the view that the government has got it wrong, the opposition parties, including ourselves, had it right, and we supported that.

On occasions we have voted with the government, sometimes because we thought they were proposing the right policies and other times because we thought we could push them that little bit further in the right direction.

This is consistent with the approach we had in the last session as well – where we can exert some influence, where we can encourage some steps in the right direction, that is far better for us.

One of the first European Greens who was elected to a parliament said it was better to take a few steps forward than stand in the same place screaming.

That's part of the nature of Green parties around the world, the desire to be constructive, to lay out a radical vision of the future and to pull no punches about the transformation in society that is required, but not to turn our noses up at steps in the right direction.

You know the broad shape of the budget. Surely being constructive means voting for it, doesn't it?

Being constructive means trying to ensure that Scotland gets the best budget it can in these circumstances.

I think that's what we have done already. I think you can see evidence of that even in the budget that was introduced before any amendments – when you see the commitments on the climate challenge fund, on carbon auditing for future budgets, when you see some of the measures the government is proposing, increasing funding for micro-renewables, decentralised energy, some other areas. There are hugely problematic areas for us in the budget, too – the road-building element of that is obviously part of it.

So what will you do on the budget?

I don't know. I will know once we have had a look at the amendments and see what the government is intending to do within existing budget lines.

As part of a Green parliamentary party you have the ability, probably, to ensure the budget goes through or not. Do you feel you have a responsibility to the people of Scotland, to the government they elected, to get that budget through?

The people of Scotland did not endorse, or give a mandate to, the SNP to be the government.

The SNP are the largest party, they are a minority, the largest of the minority parties. It gives them the moral right to be the first to form a minority government.

It also gives them the responsibility to take account of others' concerns, because it is only when you represent the parliamentary majority that can you claim a mandate. Now, if they can put together a majority that doesn't include us, then fair play to them, but I don't think that they will.

If they want to put together a majority that includes us, they need to listen to what we are saying, hear it, take account of it and demonstrate that we are able to vote for the budget in good conscience because our responsibility is to Scotland as a whole.

But it is also to the people who voted Green. We have a responsibility to them not to say: "There's just two of us, we will simply do what we are told." That's not the way it works.

Do you believe the Scottish Government really cares for the environment, or is it just doing enough to placate the environmental lobby?

I think pretty much everybody consciously would say, in their heart of hearts, they care about this issue, right across the political spectrum – with a few exceptions individually.

Political parties care about this, but political parties are made of human beings and human beings are tremendously good at rationalising things and double-think – we can rationalise huge contradictions.

Every political party is guilty of it sometimes; certainly, every government in the world is doing it on climate change.

I welcome long-term targets – 80 per cent more cuts, that's fantastic.

It won't happen while we still have governments committed to ever-growing aviation levels, to ever-growing road-traffic levels and all of the other policies we see (that are] not changing yet.

Right across the board, all the other parties are talking about the economic benefits of aviation. I don't underplay that, but if we fail on climate change, the economy will go hang; there will not be anything left of it if we fail at climate change.

So we need to be looking at a longer term and recognising that those policies need to change, and not just setting targets. If we set targets up to fail, we are worse than useless.

The proposed Lewis wind farm represents a classic example of an environmental clash – wind power against the preservation of specially protected areas. What should the Scottish Government do there?

There are situations where you are trying to balance one form of environmental harm against another. I think the environmental harm that wind turbines do is, by and large, short-term and fairly limited.

Compare that with something like biofuels. The rush to industrial-scale production of biofuels will have serious long-term environmental damage.

It's very clear to me that we need to be expanding renewables generation.

One of the problems we have, with places like Lewis and other areas of rural Scotland, is a sense that big business is coming along with a big solution and saying: "It's this or nothing."

We need to make sure people have engagement and empowerment, so they can propose their own solutions, decentralise energy solutions.

Are you in favour of that wind-farm development or not?

I think that Lewis is a great place for developing renewable energy and it has fantastic capacity, but it is not going to happen if you have politicians like me saying, this is what you are having.

It will happen if (members of the] community there have a feeling of empowerment and an ability to make decisions for themselves about what they are willing to develop.

If they have that sense of empowerment I believe they would be far more willing to see developments and to be more comfortable with the consequences.