DOMINIC Ashmole has said he fears he may be an “electoral risk” to the Scottish Greens but insists the party needs to provide “political leadership on climate” and focus on the big picture outside the Scottish Parliament.
Ashmole, 58, is the only candidate in the party’s co-leadership contest who is not an MSP, and will be third in the South Scotland list for the Greens.
Despite this, he believes that being outside of the Holyrood machine would be an asset, allowing him to focus on grassroots campaigning and big picture climate change issues.
“I truly have no idea where I stand in the voting, I genuinely don't,” he told The National from his home in Peebles, Scottish Borders.
While he believes he has plenty of local support, Ashmole isn’t sure how this translates at the national level. He admits he has “quite a different offering” compared to his competitors, Lorna Slater, Gillian Mackay and Ross Greer.
He insists that he doesn’t want to “bin” the party’s current electoral strategy, but would take a different focus if he managed to secure one of the two co-leader roles up for grabs.
One of the calls from the so-called Glasgow faction of the Greens, is that the party should focus on rooting itself in working-class communities.
Ashmole, a research and development manager at a tech company in Edinburgh, admits he wouldn’t describe himself as working class.
However, he argued that politicians have a responsibility to help those struggling to heat their homes and pay bills, but also to have a “credible” plan to tackle the fast-approaching threat of climate change.
“Most political parties just aren't going there because they know that people are struggling with all of those day-to-day concerns, and they want to talk about those concerns because they think that's where the votes are,” he said.
“And what I'm saying is that we've got to do both. If we aren't saying that the whole basis of actual survival on this planet is at risk within your children's lifetime, if we're not saying that, then who the hell is going to say it, right? And who the hell is going to deal with it? So I may be an electoral risk to the Greens … ”
He said: “I care about that stuff too – all I'm saying is that's not enough.
“We have to take responsibility, because we're meant to be providing political leadership in this country. Above all, the Greens are meant to be providing political leadership on issues of climate. These are matters of survival.”
Ashmole added: “I just want us to have both of those messages very loud and clear, and I think I'm probably of the four candidates the loudest and the clearest on that second category.”
With the other candidates being MSPs, The National asked Ashmole how he would feel about an imbalance of being a co-leader outside of Holyrood, particularly in terms of media attention.
“I don’t see it as a problem,” he said, adding that he would hope to be elected alongside a female co-leader.
“If there’s an imbalance in favour of having our female Holyrood leader in the media a lot, that’s fine with me,” he added.
“The natural tendency for them would be to focus on the policies that they are bringing through Holyrood and acting at the national level.
“There will be an entirely other niche for me, which is to talk about how well Scotland is preparing for the impact of climate change, to what extent both communities are prepared for the things that are coming our way.
“There’s national action and Holyrood, and there’s actually trying to co-opt the Scottish population to rise up and deal with the threats that are not being handled by modern politics, and realising the absolute horror of what is facing us.”
Ashmole backed the Bute House Agreement, which brought Greens into government for the first time, and says he believes the MSPs did “pretty well in the circumstances”, after being handed “broken” policies such as the ill-fated deposit return scheme.
“I think it's a fair criticism that we need to get better at communicating our policies and listening and working with communities to make sure that the solutions that we're proposing are not top down,” he added.
“That's another great reason for a co leader like myself, who's 100% out in the grassroots around the country, talking to councillors, talking to the membership, talking to local communities, finding out really what appropriate change looks like in the circumstances, rather than perhaps things that are too simplistic at a high level.”
He insisted that there is a “majority” of people in Scotland who are concerned about the looming climate catastrophe and that politicians are “just fiddling around the edges”.
“I think they probably want to hear from us talking about that and talking about the implications of that as well, and that is what I will be doing,” Ashmole said.
