Patrick Harvie calls for Greens to provide hope in final conference as leader
Scottish Green Co-Leader Patrick Harvie has delivered his final conference speech as party Co-Leader.
Addressing a hall of members Mr Harvie called for his party to offer hope and challenge the hateful politics of the far right.
Mr Harvie said: “Ours must be a movement that offers vision, ambition, and clarity; only if we do that will we deserve the trust of voters; and our message is even more urgent and important in these unsettling times.
“Green politics could hardly be more of a contrast with the rise of dangerous forces in today’s political climate; the far right threat is very real, and too much of the political spectrum is still behaving as though it can be defeated by imitation.
“They tried that with anti-immigrant and anti-asylum prejudice, making policy ever more hostile and brutal. It harmed people, and it also didn’t work.
“They tried it with Brexit, parroting meaningless slogans like ‘make Brexit work’ even though they knew it never could. It harmed people, and it also didn’t work.
“They are now doing the same thing with the so-called culture war agenda, with transphobia and the right wing’s attempt to redefine free speech. It’s harming people, and it also cannot work to defeat the far right - playing into their agenda will only ever give the far right more political space.
“Their ideas can only be defeated by openly and consistently challenging them, not by imitating them.”
In closing his speech, Mr Harvie said:
“For much of our party’s early history, people voted Green as a protest. That’s not enough. It’s not enough to win the chance to make change happen. It should never be enough to satisfy us.
“Green politics must be about making a difference in the real world, because the challenges, and crises, that we exist to face are far too urgent.
“Not just during my time in a leadership role, but throughout the two and a half decades of the devolution era, that’s what we’ve built - the capacity and the credibility to make change happen.
“It took hard work, by many people over many years, to build this party into a political force in Scotland that’s capable of making the country a better place, and that can now point to a track record of doing it instead of just talking about it.
“So that’s still the task before us - to take Green politics forward, to achieve more positive change in people’s lives, and to live up to our values in the way we do our politics, because that’s the only way to truly deserve people‘s trust, not just for ourselves, but for democracy.
“So as I close my last speech as Co-Leader, I look forward to our party having the debate we deserve, the debate we need, about how to build on the most impactful period in our party’s history, and go forward to achieve even more positive change for people and for planet.
“Thank you once again for the opportunity to serve.”
