The Greens will for the first time enter a government in the United Kingdom: on Saturday August 28, members of the Scottish Green Party approved a ” cooperation ” to participate in the leadership of Scotland with the powerful independence party SNP, which won the general elections in May.
This unprecedented alliance, negotiated throughout the summer, marks the rise of this small group, now very popular among young Scottish voters which has 7 deputies, against 64 for the SNP in Holyrood, the Parliament of Edinburgh. It also represents a victory for the Prime Minister, Nicola Sturgeon: two months before the opening of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, it allows her to put forward much more radical environmental commitments than those made by the British government of Boris Johnson. .
The Greens and the SNP have agreed to devote 10% of the Scottish state’s transport budget – or 320 million pounds sterling (373 million euros) – to “active” transport solutions – cycling and walking. The coalition is also committed to limiting cars on Scottish roads and to no longer invest in road projects (except to secure roads, open up areas of the territory or undertake work bypassing towns).
An agreement deemed “historic”
On the energy side, the two parties have pledged the creation of a fund of 500 million pounds sterling (583 million euros) to help some 100,000 workers in the oil and gas sector in the North Sea to retrain, and are counting on the continued development of wind power, with 8 GW to 12 GW of additional onshore wind electricity by 2030 – and 11 GW from offshore wind. If Scotland has turned to wind power ( 73% of its renewable energy production), hydrocarbon extraction still generates 5% of Scotland’s gross domestic product.
The deal is “Historical” and “Will allow us to put our ideas into practice”, welcomed Patrick Harvie, the charismatic boss of the Scottish Greens. The MP, who should recover a ministry, just like the co-leader of the movement, Lorna Slater, is still far from having obtained the gradual end of the issuance of new permits to operate oil and gas fields.
He did, however, succeed in pushing the SNP out of his comfort zone: the Scottish National Party is deeply anti-nuclear – Mr.me Sturgeon entered politics in the 1980s campaigning against British nuclear bases in West Scotland – but until now he had spared the interests of the oil sector, a big provider of tax revenue. “We do not agree on everything [avec les Verts], but it is a question of making a better policy and of directing better ”, assured Nicola Sturgeon. Edinburgh is in any case a step ahead of London, where Boris Johnson has multiplied the “green” promises before COP26 without, so far, announcing a detailed plan – or budget – to achieve it.
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