NICOLA Sturgeon is “welcome” to join the Scottish Greens, the party has said.
The former first minister heaped praise on the Greens in the updated foreword to her memoirs as she claimed the party “came closest to injecting a sense of hope” during the Holyrood election campaign earlier in the year.
Co-leader Gillian Mackay said that Sturgeon, who brought the Greens into government, would be welcomed into her party if the former first minister decided to make the switch.
Writing in The National, Mackay said: “Nicola has not joined the Scottish Greens and, as welcome as she would be, we do not expect her to.”
In her column, the Scottish Greens MSP criticised the SNP’s new direction under John Swinney, saying: “When Nicola became the first SNP leader to oppose new oil and gas drilling, she set an important precedent at a time when the climate crisis demanded political courage.
“Now we see an SNP Government hedging its bets by trying to squeeze more life from a finite oil and gas industry, despite the science and despite Scotland’s enormous opportunity to lead the renewables revolution.”
And she hit out at the SNP’s sluggish progress on banning so-called conversion therapy.
Mackay said: “The SNP promised to end abusive conversion practices in 2021, yet failed to introduce its own bill in the last parliamentary session, choosing instead to wait for Westminster.
“Years later, LGBTQ+ people in Scotland are still waiting for the protections they were promised.”
She added: “Since Nicola left office and we left government, that kind of bold, ambitious policy-making has slipped into reverse. Yet hope matters not only for politics but for building support for independence.
“Support for Scotland’s right to choose will only grow if and when people can picture a different country and see us working to build it: a fairer Scotland without nuclear weapons on the Clyde, back in Europe, and able to build an economy that puts people before profit.
“That is the hopeful case the Scottish Greens took into this election, and the one Nicola has alluded to in her comments.”
The former first minister said her party had been “lucky” the Greens did not stand more candidates in the constituencies for the 2026 Holyrood election, or the SNP may have lost more seats than they did.
She also criticised Swinney’s “lack of vision or big-picture thinking”.
Sturgeon’s comments were met with fierce pushback from her former Scottish Government allies.
Education Secretary Mairi McAllan, once a special adviser to Sturgeon, dismissed the former first minster’s comments as “nonsense”.
Health Secretary Angela Constance fired a dig at her former boss, saying that Swinney was Scotland’s “best first minister yet”.
The SNP and a representative for Sturgeon were approached for comment.
You can read Gillian Mackay's column in full in tomorrow's National.
