THE Scottish Greens have selected a candidate to contest the Glasgow South constituency for the first time, The National can reveal.
Holly Bruce, the party’s councillor for Langside, is set to go up against Equalities Minister Kaukab Stewart for the key seat.
With boundary changes set to redraw the seat for the Holyrood 2026 election, Bruce told The National the Greens see the seat as an “opportunity for new blood to represent the community”.
Bruce won her Langside ward seat on first preference votes, beating SNP council leader Susan Aitken in 2022.
And now, with Nicola Sturgeon standing down, Bruce said that while the former first minister has “done quite a good job” as constituency MSP, she is offering a more radical candidacy.
“I know that people really value what she [Sturgeon] has represented in politics for quite some time.
“What we're offering is something more left, more radical, more grassroots, and that is with a community representative.
“As a local councilor, I can provide that as the MSP. I think it is about that kind of locally based grassroots engagement, I think is needed for that area.
“That's what people have been saying to us on the doors as well.”
Recent polling, conducted by Find Out Now for The National, led polling guru John Curtice to predict that the Scottish Greens could return a record-breaking 18 MSPs at the election.
Bruce hailed the poll as “amazing”, but credited “long-term, sustained grassroots campaigning” from the party as finally coming to fruition.
“People are not seeing us as a wasted vote anymore,” she said. “We're real contenders and we can win this Southside seat. We can, absolutely.”
Bruce added that while she is confident, with the election not until May next year, she’s approaching the campaign as a “marathon, not a sprint”.
She said: “It’s going to take a lot of campaigning to even get elected and to be that first constituency MSP, so that's my first point of action.
“Also, I've been a locally based councilor for so long, I really want to make sure that folk are involved in Parliament's processes, but bringing kind of innovative and more radical policies to Parliament.”
The Greens returned a record eight MSPs at the last Holyrood election 2021, with the party standing then-co leader Patrick Harvie in Glasgow’s West End, ultimately losing the seat to Equalities Minister Stewart. Historically, the Greens have only had elected MSPs in Holyrood through the regional list.
Asked why she believes Glasgow South could be a breakthrough for the party at constituency level, Bruce said: “There's been really good gains from the Greens within the council over the years.
“Within the southside we now have five of our councilors in the area, and we've really built a good basis of community within core areas on the south side.
“I suppose the new south side seat has got new boundaries, it encompasses the whole of my ward, and it also encompasses a lot of areas where Green voters are and they care about Green issues.”
“Also we know that Nicola Sturgeon is standing down, and there's a real opportunity there for new blood, and for them to really represent the community.
“And as a local councillor, obviously, I'm very much part of the community.
“I’m a well-kent face, I can’t go through Queens Park without someone stopping me.”
Bruce has championed feminist town planning during her time as a Glasgow councillor, and says those are the kinds of policies she would seek to bring to the Holyrood chamber.
Glasgow City Council became the first in the UK to back a feminist town-planning strategy in 2022 , after a motion put forward by Bruce was backed by a majority of councillors.
She added: “A big passion of mine is child poverty and reducing child poverty. I think obviously the SNP have done a good job of that with the help from the Greens, with Scottish Child Payment, with scrapping the school meal debt, but I think we need to go beyond the kind of plaster sticking poverty measures.
“I think we really need to go into the root cause and the radical cause, and one of the things that needs to be improved is better childcare provision.”
Bruce argues that childcare isn’t just a feminist issue but also a “poverty and economy issue as well”.
She said: “I think if we were to get a better handle on what child care provision is available, that would do wonders for not only the economy, but for women's mobility and also child development as well.
“I think from a poverty angle, I think we really need to start looking at how our childcare system operates in Scotland.”
Bruce added: “I think childcare is one of those things that encompasses all the Green values that we have that are to have a fair society, a greener society, and one where people can be fulfilled, mobile and empowered.”
