THE Greens need to “broaden their appeal” outside of urban Scotland ahead of the next Holyrood elections, Gillian Mackay has said.
The co-leadership contender argued that the party needs to shift the perception that it is for the middle-class, and that it should “tailor its messages better” to attract working-class voters.
Mackay, MSP for Central Scotland, is currently on maternity leave taking care of her seven-week-old son Callan, and told The National the party needs to offer policies that fit the needs of the young people they targeted a decade ago – who are now likely to be in their 30s, getting married and starting families.
Mackay is vying for one of two co-leadership positions, with Lorna Slater, Dominic Ashmole and Ross Greer also in the running. It will be the first time in 17 years that Patrick Harvie has not held one of the top jobs.
The MSP said that it is going to be a “big change”, but that it was time for a “generational shift” as the party looks ahead to the next Scottish Parliament election.
“I think it is time to now grow with those young people that we were targeting 10 years ago, because we now have children, or folk are getting married and having families and all that sort of thing,” she explained.
“And while we've always got that sort of young demographic targeted pretty well, we haven't quite grown with the people that we were capturing back then.
“For me, it's about that change and how we make that step forward with people.
“I think there's a lot of our policies around families that we should be refreshing and renewing and bringing to the fore to keep those people with us.
“And again, there's a demographic beyond those young people that came into the party that would absolutely benefit from this and see this and maybe convince them to vote for us.”
Based in Grangemouth, the town where she grew up, Mackay insists that there are “benefits” the party can bring to communities outside of Edinburgh and Glasgow, where the party tends to get most of its support and has its largest base of activists.
“I think sometimes we talk at such a technical, high level – folk actually want to know what they're going to see, hear, feel, experience in their communities, as a result of whatever it is that we're putting forward,” she said.
“I think some of that is we need to simplify the concept of what we're putting forward, rather than talking about all these really high level things, which has its place, but when we're communicating with voters, I think it needs to be much plainer and go outside of that typical heartland that we've got.”
Mackay believes that making sure policies to tackle climate change are “woven” through every portfolio, such as health and education, is part of the solution to expanding the voter base. That, and the party needs to “tailor our messages better”, she adds.
Mackay explained: “Politics can often be, how general can we get it to apply to as many people as humanly possible? And that doesn't then serve those communities who do have those differences. A working-class community in rural Highland is very different to Grangemouth, and they do need different things from us as the Greens, but also from politics in general.
“I do think we need to tailor that message. It's giving branches and activists that support to be able to pick up bits of what we're doing nationally.
“Not everything applies to everywhere. We've done things on mountain hares that will play far better in Highland than it will in Falkirk or North Lanarkshire.
“That's not that people don't care about wee fluffy bunnies across the country, but there are places where it's more tangible, more real, and it's happening on people's doorsteps.”
Mackay added that in her role as health spokesperson, she looked at how to make prescriptions greener through recycling projects, and how to expand the lifespan of machinery used in the health service.
“Medicine is a huge source of waste within the NHS, and [it’s about] how we make medicines greener and have less emissions,” she added.
“I think there's elements that we can weave through every single portfolio to be talking about climate a lot more than we actually are.”
With the looming threat of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK playing a significant role in the upcoming election campaign, Mackay insists that the party needs to make its policies “tangible” as an antithesis to far-right talking points and ensure that they are “easy to understand”.
She explained: “We need to fight fire with fire, and get to those communities and say, ‘Well, this is what we've been talking about, 'but this is what it means for you’.
“Because at the moment, I think there are some of our policies that people might not be able to explain what the benefit would be to them.”
