Jamie Greene: If this is my last three months, then so be it

A year ago, the West Scotland Tory MSP was deeply unhappy. Defecting to the Liberal Democrats has given him a new enjoyment of politics – even if he doesn’t return to Holyrood in May …as told to Louise Wilson

“My biggest regret isn’t what happened this year, my biggest regret is that I didn’t defect sooner. It would have given me a bit more time to bed into my new home and prepare and plan for the future, and just get to know people. We don’t have a lot of time left, really, with the election coming up. That’s my main and only regret.

“Defecting is a really difficult thing to do because you make friends in your political party, your colleagues, the staff members, both professionally and socially. These are people that I’ve stood alongside for nine years in parliament – and before that, when you’re a candidate and you go through the same journey together. We were elected at the same time, we’d had the same ups and downs and tumultuous times in the party and in politics more widely.

“Naturally your biggest fear is, how are these people going to treat me afterwards? You don’t like to upset people that you have respect for. What I’ve found since, and this is heartening in some senses, is that many of my former colleagues are still friends with me. We still go to the pub for a pint. We still sing in the same rock band together – I won’t mention names, but I’m the token Lib Dem in the parliamentary band now. We work together on legislation or areas of shared interest.

“If you’re in a parliament of minorities, with a minority government, you have a responsibility to go and work with people. I was in opposition for nine years before I joined the Lib Dems, so I understand what it’s like to be in opposition. But in those nine years in opposition in the Tory benches, what exactly did they achieve? Never supported any budget, never voted for any major legislation of shared interest. It often was pressurised in supporting some of the government bills because it would be embarrassing not to, but it was very much opposition for opposition’s sake. And that’s fine, you’ve got a job to do in opposition to hold the government to account, but you could spend your whole life in opposition and achieve nothing in politics. I didn’t get into politics to achieve nothing; I wanted to get stuff done.

“My biggest achievement has been amending the Victims Bill. I’m really glad that I’ve managed to get the large chunks of my member’s bill into legislation, because I’d been consulting and working on that bill for three years and we were running out of time in parliament. There was no way I was going to get it through as a standalone piece of legislation. Serendipitously, the government’s own bill was running in parallel and I quite forcibly piggybacked that legislation to get my proposals through... I was quite emotional when the bill passed and I managed to get Suzanne’s Law and Michelle’s Law into the statute books.

“The reason that it matters is not just to say I got things into legislation or into law, it’s actually the people that you meet in that journey who will benefit from these changes… You suddenly remember what this job is about, what politics is about. It’s about changing the law, making good law, holding the government to account, but doing it for people in the real world. We live in a little bubble here and there’s people out there actually affected by crime and poverty and ill-health and mental health issues and waiting times, and they have children with additional support needs, and all these things are happening in the real world and we talk about them here and we politicise them, but these are things that happen to ourselves, to our families, to our friends, to our neighbours.

“The best thing you can do is actually the smallest thing that no one ever hears about. That’s when someone comes to your office with some casework and they spill their heart to you and they’re in dire straits and you get something for them, whether it’s adaptation in their house because they’re ill or they get up the waiting list for a hospital operation or they get their kid into the right school because they’ve got additional support needs. Those little things actually all matter. They’re not on the front pages of newspapers, but I don’t care because I will walk away from this job, if I lose my seat next year, really proud of what I have done and where I’m at in politics 10 years on from when I started.

“It’s been a real emotional rollercoaster. I’ve had really good days and really awful days, as every politician would probably tell you. It’s definitely taken its toll on me and my family over the years as well, no doubt about it. But I’m standing again. I’m up for the challenge… Who knows what will happen at the election? I wouldn’t put money on any outcome whatsoever. I’ll just need to wait and see.

“If this is my last three months, then so be it. Politics is addictive. It’s in your blood. Even if I’m not re-elected, I suspect I won’t be very far away from politics because it’s exciting, it’s interesting, it’s current. I think anyone who’s involved in politics is mad, but also it’s a passion. It’s a vocation, it’s not a job… I’m very confident that the Lib Dems will at least double in size at the next election. If I’m part of that cohort, that’s wonderful. If I’m not, then I’ll still walk away proud of what I’ve contributed.

“Over the years, I’ve always been proud of the way that I’ve carried myself. I’ve always done what I think is right in my own mind and tried to stick to my principles as best I can, which has not been easy given some of the shenanigans in the UK Conservative government over the years. But I’ve got a job to do here in Holyrood… People know me as someone they can come and talk to and do business with. That’s how politics should be. And I think the Scottish Parliament’s unique in that sense because it’s not very good at it. Maybe it used to be, before my time. I hear stories about how friendly it was and how much consensus there was.

“The parliament will have to find a way to be decent with each other and not resort to this horrid, torrid tribalism that’s descended on this session of parliament, which is very unlike the last session. I hope the next session doesn’t get worse. This parliament needs to reset itself and find a way to do business together for the greater good of the country and not descend into a squabbling bun fight of camps of ideologies which cannot and do not speak to each other. If that happens, the only losers in this are the public.

“There’s a lot more consensus in here than people think. But they put on this bravado of antipathy and hatred towards each other. The parliament will have to roll up its sleeves and fix some really difficult economic, societal, health issues that this country is facing, or we’re going to have five years of very grim outcomes and very grim budgets, very austere living standards in this country, and never any resolution to the constitutional problem which divides our country still to this day. I am worried about it, but I also think it’s going to be very interesting. I’m absolutely fascinated by what the makeup of the next parliament will be. All bets are off.”