Ross Greer was elected as the youngest MSP in the Scottish Parliament’s history at the age of 21 in 2016 famously giving a socialist salute when he was sworn in at Holyrood.
The 31-year-old, who joined the Scottish Greens at 15, grew up in the well to do Glasgow suburb of Bearsden and is sometimes jokingly referred to by his colleagues as the “Bearsden Bolshevik”, a way of portraying him as a middle class revolutionary.
It's not a wholly accurate description though as while Mr Greer was raised and educated in Bearsden he did grow up in fairly modest circumstances often surrounded at school by people from much wealthier backgrounds.
His parents held working class jobs. His father worked as a janitor and his mother a receptionist.
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Outside Green politics Mr Greer's main interests is his church where for the past ten years he has enjoyed leading its youth work helping children and young people across the age spectrums from pre schoolers to young adults in their 20s.
He is very much a proud and committed Christian and is still a member of the Church of Scotland congregation he was baptised into.
"I draw a huge amount of strength from my faith," he told The Herald.
"It is my faith that has shaped my politics."
In Holyrood he was quickly seen by his party and by members across the parliament as a rising star.
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He helped negotiate the Bute House Agreement with the SNP which took the Scottish Greens into power for the first time in 2021 and remained the main person in the party's Holyrood group to talk through any issues with the SNP over the functioning of the deal.
In the same year he was appointed the party's finance spokesperson and its member of the Scottish Parliament’s Finance and Public Administration Committee.
Despite his success as a politician, his time in politics has not always been a happy one.
In an interview with The Herald this summer he revealed that he had to be hospitalised twice with chest pains in recent years because of anonymous negative briefings against him by unknown figures in the party and was so devastated by what was going on he was on the cusp of leaving politics, even writing a letter of resignation to the then leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater.
He decided against sending it after Mr Harvie spent a part of his final speech as leader to the Scottish Greens conference this year calling for an end to the internal "anonymous leaks, smears, insults".
Mr Greer was not clear on why he should have been targeted but he believed it amounted to bullying.
As he prepares to give his first speech as co-leader to the Scottish Greens conference which is taking place this Saturday and Sunday in Edinburgh, he and his party seem to be in a better place.
At a pre-conference event in the Glasgow southside suburb of Langside on Thursday this week the party announced an 800 member increase in the last six months giving it largest membership since 2016, with the number of members reaching 8,279, more than the Scottish Liberal Democrats and Conservatives.
And for now anyway the briefings against Mr Greer appear to have subsided.
He and his fellow new co-leader Gillian Mackay are close friends as well as colleagues, bonding over Green politics of course, but also a shared love of Star Wars.
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