Fergus Ewing is wrong, the Scottish Greens aren't 'hard left', they are just bonkers – Kenny MacAskill

For sure there’s profile for the Greens but it’s been far from beneficial, exposing the divide within the party, as well as incompetence at the top. As for the SNP, it’s not just Fergus Ewing but many in elected office and amongst the rank-and-file who are uneasy and, more often, entirely opposed to this stitch-up.

The SNP administration’s defence that it provides parliamentary stability’s fanciful. The parliamentary make-up always ensured the ability to deliver legislation even when just shy of a majority. That it was to deliver an independence majority’s simply baloney. Nothing of any note has been delivered on that, quite the opposite, with the Greens fairweather friends at best on the core SNP issue.

Ewing has rightly called out the idiocy of the move. The SNP have gained nothing and lost a lot. The credibility and competency of the administration were waning but the policies, either in the hands of the Greens or influenced by them, are proving catastrophic, especially in SNP heartlands.

My only disagreement with Fergus is that he terms them “hard left”, as someone of the left I just view them as “bonkers”. We need to address the climate crisis and fast, but in a way that allows for a just transition and takes people with us, not alienating and allowing for a populist backlash against necessary actions.

The Bute House backroom deal came about without being put to the public or even with the SNP membership having a vote, let alone a voice. It was formed for the deliverance of Nicola Sturgeon’s grand gender reform project which is about to crash and burn in the Supreme Court, as has so much of what little legacy she left.

That was confirmed by Robin Harper. Now I knew Robin long before we were both elected to parliament. He was then in the Ecology Party, the precursor to the Greens, then the Scottish Green Party. A personable man, he was widely popular in parliament and without it as I knew people he’d taught when a teacher and they recalled him fondly. He’s hard to rile.

His views on independence were made clear in 2014. That’s perfectly legitimate and given the Greens’ lukewarm position, he neither felt the need to leave nor them to discipline him. Instead, the cause of his departure is the zealous identity politics with which Sturgeon forged an alliance.

That was crassly exposed when the Scottish party whooped and hollered as it voted to break its relationship with the UK Green Party, not on the constitutional issue but on their failure to adhere to the one true faith on ID politics.

The Scottish Greens have now lost both Harper and the extremely capable Andy Wightman. Capability replaced by cretinism and the environment by gender ID. The UK Greens will do well this coming election, but a day of reckoning is coming for their erstwhile Scottish colleagues and rightly so.

Kenny MacAskill is Alba Party MP for East Lothian