The Scottish Green leader has urged supporters to consider a tactical vote for Labour or the Liberal Democrats if their candidates have a better chance of stopping the Tories.
Patrick Harvie said he regretted that the Scottish Greens were only able to stand three candidates in the general election, but said a shortage of time and money meant the party had to focus on only a handful of Scotland’s 59 Commons constituencies.
Implying that Green voters should set aside the party’s quest for Scottish independence at this election, Harvie told the Guardian blocking the Tories should be a priority for his party’s supporters, many of whom would feel an affinity with the pro-independence Scottish National party.
“The idea that you’re focused on the need to advance Green politics but also oppose the Tory government doesn’t always lead you in one political direction,” Harvie said, in an effort to fend off allegations from opponents that his party is standing aside in 56 seats to bolster the SNP.
“There will be some parts of the country where Green voters will be tempted to vote SNP if there’s no Green candidate; there will be other parts of the country where Green voters might be tempted to vote Lib Dem or Labour.”
Harvie added there were clear signs that SNP support was falling and it would lose seats on 8 June. “There’s clearly a sense and we get this on the doorstep, and I think other parties are getting the same thing, that the SNP are not expecting to have the kind of stellar result that they had in 2015,” he said.
“[They] haven’t ground to a halt but they’re clearly not in a position of such incredible momentum that they were in in 2015.”
Harvie, co-convenor of the Scottish Greens, is standing for Westminster for the first time in Glasgow North, a seat held by the SNP’s Patrick Grady, after the area had the highest Scottish Green vote in the council elections this month.
He said he shared the stance of Caroline Lucas, the only Green MP at Westminster, that tactical voting was needed. “If I thought Glasgow North might fall to the Tories I would’ve stopped to think very hard [about standing], but I’m convinced that it won’t,” he said, before recommending Green voters also consider backing Scotland’s only Labour MP, Ian Murray, in Edinburgh South.
“If I was in Ian Murray’s constituency the question would be very different because he’s clearly very capable of beating the Tories.” Murray is a vehement opponent of Scottish independence, a key policy objective for the Scottish Greens.
Despite a jump in membership after taking a firmly pro-independence stance in the 2014 referendum campaign, the Green’s momentum has slowed. Party membership has stalled at 8,000.
It overtook the Lib Dems in the 2016 Scottish parliament elections, winning six seats on regional lists via the additional member system of proportional representation. It won only 19 council seats on 4 May after attracting only 4.1% of first preference votes Scotland-wide, well below opinion polls suggesting 12% support for the Greens.
Although the party received only 2,268 votes in Glasgow North in the 2015 general election, coming fourth, and took only 1.3% of the vote Scotland-wide, the city has become a hotspot for Green voters.
In May’s council elections, when the party won seven seats in the city, the Greens were top of the first preference votes cast in a key Glasgow North ward of Hillhead and 25% in neighbouring Kelvin.
Harvie said he hoped contesting there and just two other seats, Falkirk and Edinburgh North and Leith, enabled the party to focus its activists and money on contests with the best chance of a strong result in this election. He said they expected to spend up to the constituency campaign limit of £11,800 in Glasgow North alone, and flood the seat with campaigners.
The Greens have been heavily criticised by their opponents for standing aside in so many seats. Claims it did so to help the SNP in an unspoken nationalist alliance intensified after Maggie Chapman, the SGP’s other co-convenor, said she believed the Greens should stand aside to help the SNP defeat Tory candidates in southern Scotland.
Harvie insists the party will not endorse any other candidates. He said despite the growth in membership, the party was too small and inexperienced to stand a full slate of Westminster candidates in a snap election, so soon after the council and Holyrood elections.
He said the key campaign issues would be a new universal basic income for all adults; ending subsidies and investments in North Sea oil and gas, and other fossil fuels; re-regulating bus services and protecting social and environmental rights after Brexit.
Given the low base the Scottish Greens start from, Harvie was cautious about predicting victory in Glasgow North. “If we came second that would be far and away our best Westminster election result ever; I want to convince people they can put a green voice in Westminster not just by getting a good result but by winning the seat and putting forward ideas that are not coming from the other parties,” he said.
