THE Scottish Greens will unveil a new “brave and combative” independence strategy, Ross Greer has said.
The National understands a paper outlining the strategy will be published ahead of the party’s National Council meeting in November.
It will then be officially announced in December or early 2026.
The Scottish Greens co-leader told The National that his indy plan would involve using existing powers effectively, as well as pushing the limits of devolution and picking more fights with the UK Government.
“We need an independence strategy that is so much braver than what the Scottish Government's putting forward at the moment,” he told The National.
“There is no shortcut to independence. There's no way that we can snap our fingers, play the right cheat code, and suddenly that's it we're there."
He added: “This is really, really hard. This is a monumental political challenge. To achieve that kind of goal with that difficulty – we need to be bold, we need to be ambitious, we need to be hopeful, and we need to be combative. And, ultimately, I think the way you summarise all of that is: be brave.”
The First Minister John Swinney put forward his plans for Scottish independence in July, saying getting a second referendum could only be achieved if the SNP win a majority in Holyrood.
But it has been met by much opposition from SNP members, who are set to challenge it at next week’s party conference with several competing amendments.
“I think I'm probably in the same boat as most SNP members here in my frustration at the First Minister's strategy,” Greer said.
“It's not a strategy to achieve independence, it's a strategy to re-elect the SNP. He has every right to campaign to re-elect his own party, that's his job as party leader. He should not present that as a strategy to achieve Scotland's independence.”
He added: “We've been stuck as a movement for most of the last decade just endlessly talking about process and that has not built support for the cause itself. The general public, the people in the middle who we actually need to persuade, don't care about process.
“They don't know what a Section 30 order is. They are not interested in what the Supreme Court's judgment was.”
Greer went on: “What I'm arguing for is a strategy to build support for independence and to do that by maximising the good that we can do with the powers that we've already got.”
The Scottish Greens co-leader said that his strategy involves going into the “grey areas between what's devolved and reserved” and “essentially dare the UK Government to stop us”.
Giving an example of where this could happen, he said: “I really want to see the Scottish Government do more around employment and wages. The Scottish Government gives hundreds of millions of pounds to private businesses, and often for good reason to support the economy, to support small businesses in particular.
“We could get much better value for that money if we set much higher conditions around things like minimum wage levels, trade union recognition, no zero hours contracts, no unpaid trial shifts.
"These are areas where the Scottish Government has been unbelievably cautious on the assumption that the UK government might step in, tha we might be vetoed, that we might not be able to do that.”
Greer added: “We were told for 10 years that we couldn't require the real living wage as a condition of public sector contracts and grants.
“As soon as the Greens came into government in 2021, we just did it alongside Ivan McKee, SNP minister, so we share the credit with him for it. That happened 4 years ago. It hasn't been challenged. It's been successful, it's boosted a whole load of people's wages.”
He went on: “So, there are loads of other areas like that and every time we do that, we emphasise to people the good that comes from Scotland being able to make these decisions for ourselves.
“And every time the UK Government decides ‘no, you have gone too far and we're stepping in’, they're just making the case for constitutional change for us.
“All of that collectively builds support for independence itself.”
“We all need to acknowledge that we will not become an independent nation until that is clearly undisputedly the settled role of the majority of people who live here.
“Yes is now just ever so slightly in the lead if you look at the average of recent polls, but that's not the kind of decisive lead that we need for the kind of political pressure that we require.”
