LORNA Slater has said she is keen to take on “extremist climate change denying" Nigel Farage in televised debates, as the Scottish Greens co-leadership contest enters its final week.
The Lothian region MSP is the only incumbent co-leader taking part in the contest, after Patrick Harvie announced he was stepping back ahead of the looming Holyrood ballot in 2026.
Slater, fellow MSPs Gillian Mackay and Ross Greer, and Dominic Ashmole are all vying for the two co-leader positions, with the results due to be published on Friday August 29.
Speaking to The National, Slater said it is critical to keep climate change on the political agenda – particularly with the rise of outright "denial" from Reform and the Scottish Conservatives.
“With the Tories now having gone from climate sceptic to climate denial under Russell Findlay and Reform in that place as well, it’s going to make it much harder to do,” she said.
“It’s wild to me that I can go into my place of work and be called a dangerous extremist for repeating what climate scientists say.
“That’s where we are, and it’s a very upsetting place for Scotland to be.”
Slater said that, in her opinion, one of the reasons the Bute House Agreement collapsed was that while there is a pro-independence majority in Holyrood, there is no consensus on tackling climate change.
Since the Greens left government, Slater accused the SNP of “dialling back” on climate commitments. From watering down the heat and buildings bill to “prevaricating” over publishing the long-awaited energy strategy because they are not “brave enough” to explicitly state there should be no more oil and gas, Slater said the Scottish Government was “not doing enough” to tackle emissions.
“I've got the confidence to take on Nigel Farage and Russell Findlay and all the others in terms of setting that out, because they are the dangerous extremists for denying that climate change is happening and that we need to make serious, serious changes to how we get about, to how our industries emit, to how we use our land in Scotland in order to preserve the future for young people,” Slater said.
With Reform being an inevitable part of the 2026 Holyrood campaign, Slater said she fears it will pull other parties “to the right because they’ll be afraid of losing voters”.
She added: “The Scottish Greens are a different cup of tea. We're a values based party. We know what we believe.
“Our goal is to try and persuade people that what we believe can be implemented and will make Scotland a better place. We're not going to shift where we sit on the political spectrum in the hopes of winning votes.”
Despite the collapse of Bute House Agreement in April 2024, Slater describes the power sharing agreement as “brilliant”, particularly due to the number of Green policies the party were able to enact before former first minister Humza Yousaf ended the deal.
She firmly believes that while the Greens should have an activist element to their party, they should focus on the political, and that the party should “build on its successes”.
“The unique thing that we can do, that other parts of the Green movement can't, is make changes to legislation…is negotiate with the party of government…is influence budgets,” she said.
“Therefore we need to focus our time and efforts on those things. So yes, I'm absolutely at the political end of that.
“We are a political party. We win seats in councils and in the Scottish Parliament in order to influence the future of Scotland politically.
“I think the Scottish Greens have done very well at that – things like rolling out free school meals to more children, free bus travel for young people, changing the taxation structure of Scotland to make it more fair, and then using that money to really invest in public services.
“That has changed the nature of Scotland. You can look at the differences between Scotland and England to see some of those effects, and we want to continue that going forward.”
On independence, Slater was firm in her belief that John Swinney’s strategy is “nonsense”, as an SNP majority does not guarantee a referendum, particularly as Prime Minister Keir Starmer had not agreed to those terms. Starmer has repeatedly said he would not allow a referendum to go ahead.
She insisted that a pro-independence majority does make the case for allowing Scotland to decide, and that because it is important to so many people in Scotland it still “needs to be part of the discussion”.
Slater said: “Over and over again, you'll hear the Unionist parties hoping that we'll forget about it, because they're like, ‘We don't let them have a referendum, they'll forget about it and it will go away’.
“It's not going to go away.”
