LORNA Slater has suggested the Scottish Greens would be open to working with the SNP in government again after the next Holyrood election.
Slater, along with her co-leader Patrick Harvie, served as junior ministers from 2021 to 2024 but were sacked from their roles when former first minister Humza Yousaf ended the Bute House Agreement shortly before resigning last year.
Speaking to our sister paper The Herald, Slater was asked if she could see the Greens supporting the SNP in government again in 2026 through another Bute House Agreement.
She said: “2026 is a long way off and we’ve already seen some dramatic shifts in election outcomes this year, so it’s much too soon to say what the electorate outcome might be.
“The Scottish Greens would always seek to have as much influence to deliver policies like we have delivered free bus travel for under 22s, getting bills through like the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act.
“We are here to get things done. We want to be as effective as possible. The parliamentary arithmetic in 2026 is certainly going to be interesting to see.”
Slater (above) did add, however, that any agreement would need to be approved by party members.
She described the Bute House deal as a “unique arrangement” and said that “our party members might demand different things next time and we might approach it differently”.
Responding to Slater’s comments, a spokesperson for the SNP said: “In 2026 the people of Scotland will have the opportunity to vote for a party that puts their interests first and delivers on their priorities.
“That party is the SNP and in government we are continuing constructive discussions with all parties to deliver on those priorities in the Scottish Budget.
“That is the message we’ll be taking to voters across the country in the year ahead.”
Stance on Scottish Labour
In the same interview, Slater said it would be “difficult” to work with Labour in Scotland given the range of policy differences.
This includes cuts made to the Winter Fuel Payment by the UK Labour Government and the decision not to award compensation to Waspi women.
Slater said: “It is very difficult to imagine working with a Labour Party that is still in favour of nuclear weapons, the House of Lords, the way they have treated the Waspi women, the Winter Fuel Payments.
“The co-operation agreement was based on a shared vision and at this point I don’t see much shared vision and values between Labour and the Scottish Greens.”
It comes as parties are still in talks with the SNP over Budget negotiations continuing ahead of a vote in Holyrood in February.
Following the announcement of the Budget by Shona Robison at the start of December, the Greens said they could not back the proposed measures as things stood at the time.
“We are open minded on the Budget,” Slater told The Herald.
“We are negotiating in good faith. We had some key things we were looking for – no cuts to council funding, no freeze or cap to council tax, an increase to climate and nature spending.
"The First Minister does appear to have made an attempt to put these things into the budget. Cosla has said there is a real terms increase [to council funding] that is good to hear, the First Minister claims there is £4.9 billion that is more than the £4.7bn we saw last year.
"That's the part we need to unpack. On the surface of it there seems to be cuts to active travel, nature restoration, for heating and insulating homes, so it's not clear how these cuts add up to an increase. That's what we still need to look at.
"We are still negotiating in good faith and are open minded. We would love to see more green things in the budget and those discussions are ongoing.
"The pledge to bring in free bus travel for asylum seekers is slightly frustrating as we actually won that in last year's budget and the first thing that happened when the SNP Government found themselves in difficulty earlier this year was to cut it.
"They appeared to go after all the green stuff. So a big part of our negotiation this year is that the SNP has to convince us that we can trust them.
"We are not going to pass a budget if we think that half way through the year they will drop all the green commitments that they made because that appears to be what happened last year."
