NIALL Christie, the Scottish Greens candidate for Glasgow South, secured the party’s best-ever result in the constituency during Thursday’s General Election.
Coming in third place, Christie won 13.1% of the vote while many of his fellow Green candidates across the city also reported record results.
In an election that will no doubt be remembered in Scotland for the dramatic fall in the fortunes of the SNP, the marked improvement in the Green vote shows that there remains a hunger for progressive, pro-independence politics.
Indeed, the figures prove it.
In 2019, the Greens won a total of 28,122 votes across Scotland - representing 1% of the vote share.
In 2024, they won more than 90,000 votes and secured 3.8% of the vote share.
“This has been years in the making,” Christie told the Sunday National.
“We’ve shown just how effective targeted local campaigns can be.
“In areas where we didn’t even run candidates in the last General Election, we’ve picked up huge swathes of support.
“It’s really, really encouraging and shows that what we’re offering – radical policies, a positive vision, and costed promises that would make a tangible difference to people’s lives – is resonating.”
In a year that saw the end of the Bute House Agreement, the Greens’ historically friendly relationship with the SNP has undeniably been tested.
While the Greens have emerged from the abrupt scrapping of the co-operation deal by Humza Yousaf to improved support, the SNP have not been so lucky.
“In places like Glasgow North with Alison Thewliss (below) and in South West with Chris Stephens, there was genuine disappointment in the room,” said Christie.
“Not just among the SNP but amongst people in Glasgow who saw two really good MPs lose their seats.
“In my opinion, that wasn’t their fault. It was their party’s fault.
“Both of them were popular because they were rooted in their communities and worked exceptionally hard.
“So, I think the SNP need to look at where we’ve done well and ask themselves why they’re dipping in the polls when there’s clearly a desire for an alternative to the Westminster parties like Labour.”
It has long been argued that the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system places smaller parties at a distinct disadvantage, with the total number of votes cast for Green candidates not being reflected in the make-up of Parliament.
But after a stint in the Scottish Government, the profile of the Greens has undeniably been inflated.
They’re not so small anymore.
“I think it has been a bit forgotten that under FPTP, significant portions of people will have voted tactically,” added Christie.
“People will have believed the fear coming from Labour that they were the only party able to keep the Tories out, even though in Glasgow there’s no chance of them finishing anywhere.
“Yet despite that, we’re still seeing thousands upon thousands of people in Glasgow who want to vote Green.
“If I were the SNP, I’d be terrified of what could happen in Glasgow in 2026, 2027, and 2029.”
When it comes to independence, Christie suggested that the SNP had forgotten what attracted so many people to the movement in 2014.
He said: “We got close to independence in 2014 not because of the business-driven, establishment-focused idea of it which comes from the SNP nowadays.
“It got close because it embraced communities and dealt with what ordinary people wanted to see happen in their country.
“It feels like the SNP have forgotten about that now.
“People who are independence-focused, who have a vision of a more progressive, more left-wing Scotland, they’re moving to the Greens in numbers we’ve just not seen before - particularly at a Westminster election.
“I don’t think that points to independence being dead. It points to independence being viewed as a vehicle to fundamentally overhaul the way our society works.”
The Green Party in England also recorded their best-ever result in a General Election, increasing their number of seats from one to four.
It’s an achievement that’s come despite significantly more media attention being paid to Nigel Farage’s similarly sized Reform UK, which, in the end, gained just one more seat than the Greens.
“The media focus on Reform because they know how ridiculous they sound and they can get a quick story out of it,” said Christie.
“Still, even with the odds stacked against us when it comes to the media, we’ve seen huge gains in both Scotland and England.”
After the Scottish Government missed its climate targets and paused the prescription of puberty blockers for new patients at the country’s only gender identity clinic, members were due to vote on the continuation of the Bute House Agreement.
In the end, Humza Yousaf (below) saved them the bother.
However, Christie said it’s a debate likely to run on in the party following the General Election.
“We did some good stuff over the two and half years we were in power,” he said.
“But we also had to swallow some really big losses.
“People expect the Greens to put ordinary folk and the climate at the forefront of everything we do but that was somewhat watered down by being tied to the SNP - particularly at a time when they were struggling across Scotland.
“The idea that [Scotland] could only get things done by having ‘Greens in the room’ just does not hold water anymore.
“I think we need to really give some thought as to what effect that had on us, where we could have been today if we hadn't been tied to the SNP for the last three years.
“We need to have that discussion because we cannot go on with unanswered questions.
“We need a coherent vision for 2026 because we want to keep up this momentum that we’ve built to gain more seats at Holyrood, at a council level, and potentially even at Westminster in 2029.”
