Green shoots

Scotland lacks hope and the Green Party, with its new co-leaders, is the answer needed to fix that.  

That's the message Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay are hoping to sell to the electorate in the 2026 Holyrood elections, starting with their party conference this weekend. 

Ahead of their first conference as co-leaders, Holyrood sat down with the pair to figure out what exactly that means.  

“We're bringing hope back,” says Greer. “People are just feeling so despondent and so angry right now and they're right to. But in the Greens, they see a party that is serious about helping them, doing things that will improve their life, their family's life and their community's life.” 

The Greens are riding high right now, heading into the Scottish conference and next year’s election buoyed by numbers that reveal party membership is at its highest level since 2016. The majority of that rise came in the last six months, after the election of Greer and Mackay. The stratospheric rise of Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales may have something to do with it as well, but as the saying goes ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.’  

“The vibe is really good,” says Mackay. “It's great to see the biggest uptick in membership since the independence referendum. That's a huge confidence boost for Ross and I ahead of conference, that [the rise] is mostly from under our leadership. We need to make sure that good feeling transfers through conference to all our members and our branches as well to make sure they're as enthused as we are to get out there and start knocking doors.” 

If recent polling is to be believed, the Greens are on track for ten MSPs in next year's election, an increase of two from 2021. This would launch them squarely into the wild west of parties competing for fourth place in Holyrood behind the SNP, Labour and Reform.  

The emergence of Reform in Scotland has been less explosive than in England, with no MPs elected in 2024 and only one MSP in Holyrood after Gramham Simpson defected from the Conservatives in August. Despite this relatively slow start in last year's general election, Reform is predicted to win a total of 17 seats in Holyrood next year, eclipsing the Conservatives and pushing Labour hard to become the party of opposition.  

“A lot of people want to see someone be brave enough to take on the kind of lies that Reform is spreading about immigrants and about asylum seekers,” says Greer. “It's no surprise that party like Reform is doing that, they're bankrolled by the people who are actually at fault. They are bankrolled by the super-rich, by billionaires, by tax avoiders, by those greedy landlords. In the Greens, people have a party that is willing to take on that bullshit, to call that out, and to actually deliver real solutions, the kind of changes that people really need in their lives.” 

In this election, Greer says that the party is aiming to focus on tackling the “climate crisis and the cost-of-living crisis” through schemes like free bus travel for all. In the last parliament, the Greens were instrumental in implementing a scheme that allowed free bus travel for everyone under the age of 22. Greer says he would like to see that scheme expanded to grant free bus travel for anyone, regardless of their age to reduce both emissions and cost for working people. 

“I think we need to demonstrate what that generational shift in leadership means for the party, but also for what the electorate are going to see ahead of the 2026 election,” says MacKay. “We need to be showing people what green politics means to change their lives. We've shown through free bus travel for under 22s and scrapping peak rail fares that we can make people's lives both easier and cheaper and that we will continue to do that. I think that will be a strong theme going towards Holyrood in 2026.”