Green Party associations have decided not to stand candidates in a break with the rest of the Scottish party.
Last week, the Scottish Green Party decided it would not enter into a “Remain alliance” as their counterparts in England and Wales did and pledged to fight more than 20 seats in the December 12 poll.
However, the Dundee and Angus association has said it will focus on campaigning against the Tories, singling out Angus MP Kirstene Hair – who the party says “has a voting record that stands against everything we are for”.
Local branches in Perth and North Perthshire, along with North East Fife, have also said they would not field candidates.
Stephen Gethins, the incumbent in North East Fife, currently has a majority of just three votes and Perth and North Perthshire candidate Pete Wishart was just 22 votes ahead of the Tories in 2017.
The news comes just days after the party’s campaign launch on Friday in South Queensferry, where co-leader Lorna Slater said the Greens would fight more than 20 contests across the country.
According to a statement on the branch’s Facebook page, the decision was taken at a meeting of members on Saturday.
The Scottish Green Party said the decision not to stand is one taken by local associations.
The statement from the branch said: “We have concluded that we will not be running candidates in Dundee and Angus. Instead, we’re going to focus our resources on campaigning against the Conservative Party in Angus.
“We fully support all Scottish Green candidates who are running in this election to bring the SGP’s vital and distinctive message to voters. We need to demand climate action now. We need voters to demand climate action now.
“But Angus’ Tory MP Kirstene Hair has a voting record that stands against everything we are for. She’s voted against support for renewable energy and human rights protections, and in favour of austerity cuts and a disastrous hard Brexit deal.
“We can’t have a green and independent Scotland while politicians like this remain in power.
“We’ll be announcing canvassing events in the Angus towns shortly. You’re all very welcome to join us!”
A spokesman for the Scottish Green Party said: “The decision about whether to stand in individual seats is for local Green branches and are taken for a number of reasons including looking at resources for fighting the 2021 Holyrood election, but all over the country Scottish Greens will be putting pressure on all the establishment parties to recognise the urgency of the climate emergency.
“This is the first general election since UN climate scientists gave us just ten years to turn it around and the loudest and clearest way to demand climate action is to vote Scottish Green.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here