GRAHAM GRANT: The demise of toxic Green deal can't come soon enough

You may not have heard of the Patrick Harvie Principle, but it’s wise advice: whatever the Scottish Greens’ co-convener supports, back the opposite.

Yet for reasons that are hard to fathom, he has exercised disproportionate influence over Scottish politics for many gruelling years.

He was the self-styled powerbroker upon whom the SNP had to rely – along with Tory back-up – during the years when it didn’t have a majority. Alex Salmond was said to have hated this enforced dependence – but didn’t have much option when it came to getting policies through parliament.

Now Mr Harvie is a government minister under the Greens’ 2021 Bute House Agreement with the SNP.

Marxists

Deprived of the majority they craved to keep the independence dream on life support, the Nationalists struck up a deal with his party.

The fact that the Greens are Marxists, opposed to the very concept of growth, seemingly wasn’t a problem – well, the SNP has never understood the economy, nor cared about its expansion.

Nicola Sturgeon struck the Bute House Agreement with the Greens in 2021 – but cracks are now growing in the pact

Nonetheless, the ‘optics’ of joining forces with anti-capitalists didn’t prevent Salmond’s successor as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, from creating a supposed ‘pro-independence majority’.

The anti-independence majority among voters in 2014 wasn’t a factor in the decision-making, and the deal was formalised – but now it’s in dire straits.

In fact, it has been in trouble for a while, with some in the SNP questioning the electoral logic of shackling the party to a group of Left-wing ideologues with a tenuous relationship to reality – also an accurate description of the Nationalists.

Three years on, the Bute House Agreement is on the brink of oblivion amid an outcry over SNP ministers ditching key green targets on emissions last week.

Grassroots Greens are aghast, but Mr Harvie and his cohorts are clinging on to their ministerial perks and salaries for now – and Humza Yousaf has said, implausibly, that the SNP/Green axis is ‘worth its weight in gold’.

The SNP is incompetent but the Greens compound that ineptitude, bringing to the table a level of cack-handed policy-making which puts Mr Yousaf and his blundering team in the shade.

The botched Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) – masterminded by Mr Harvie’s fellow Green minister Lorna Slater – was a disaster.

It aimed to impose a charge on all drinks bottles and cans which would be refunded if customers returned them to recycling points – a sound idea in theory.

But Ms Slater pulled the plug on the DRS last June after the UK Government asked for waste glass to be excluded, as this was already widely recycled.

Now taxpayers face the prospect of costly legal battles as out-of-pocket firms attempt to claw back £79million.

The Greens’ impact on energy policy has been just as pernicious, with 100,000 oil and gas jobs at stake as the SNP Government turns its back on a pivotal sector in the pursuit of a long-discredited ambition to turn Scotland into the ‘Saudi Arabia of renewables’.

Progress on major infrastructure projects has been glacial – Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop has refused to guarantee that the A9 will be dualled by 2035.

The initial pledge was that the job would be done by next year.

The Greens have helped to put the brakes on road construction – leaving large swathes of the network in a dangerously poor condition.

But the damage doesn’t stop there – in his capacity as the minister for tenants’ rights, Mr Harvie is also helping to spearhead a new Bill which could see landlords banned from increasing rent for up to five years.

Another Green-led attempt at controlling the lettings market failed last year when rents rocketed – despite a government-imposed cap on increases.

Many landlords looked to get around the new rules by hiking rents between tenancies to cover their own soaring costs as interest rates on mortgages rose.

Other parts of the proposed legislation include the right for tenants to keep pets and to decorate their homes.

Absurd

If approved, these absurd measures are likely to drive many private landlords out of the business.

Yet despite declaring a ‘housing crisis’ and a ‘housing emergency’, the SNP/Green coalition has cut almost £200million from next year’s housing budget. Far from increasing that pot to meet need and demand, the rate of housebuilding here has plummeted.

From a threatened ‘latte levy’ on disposable coffee cups to a doomed crusade on the installation of costly heat pumps, the Greens excel when it comes to barmy, unworkable and usually very expensive initiatives.

The Greens championed gender self-ID but the legislation was blocked by the UK Government – and the SNP gave up the legal battle to salvage it last December.

Pressing ahead with the moves – which would have made it easier for people to change gender from the age of 16 – was a red line for the Greens, who played their ignoble part in the sidelining and demonising of anyone who dared to criticise it.

Over the past couple of days, Mr Harvie has been doing the media rounds and fielding questions about the Cass Report – and doing his best to rubbish it.

Shameful

Its author, paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, found the evidence for allowing young people to change gender was built on weak foundations and no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of treatments such as puberty blockers for children.

Mr Harvie argued that there were ‘far too many criticisms of it’ for him to accept the review as a ‘valid scientific document’.

That’s a shameful slur on the professionalism of Dr Cass – who has revealed she cannot travel by public transport because she fears for her personal safety.

Yesterday, Mr Harvie said the report had been ‘politicised’ and ‘weaponised’ when asked repeatedly by Nick Robinson on the BBC’s Today programme whether he accepted its findings.

Yet Mr Harvie has also ‘weaponised’ it by attacking the credibility of Dr Cass –rather than debating the content of her findings.

Either way, the SNP Government suspended the use of puberty blockers last week – though Mr Harvie said this was down to clinicians and not ministers.

Many long-suffering Greens are tired of the leadership veering into these ‘culture wars’ rather than focusing on the environment – which is, after all, its raison d’être – and their disillusionment could spell the end of the power-sharing deal.

The demise of the farcical Bute House Agreement can’t come soon enough, not least because it may trigger an early Holyrood election – and put an end to nearly 20 years of toxic separatist rule.

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