A handful of cantankerous nats do not a rebellion make. However, the shifting mood within the SNP against the Greens does hint at a party losing its bottle on every front.

Talk abounds of Humza Yousaf facing a back-bench "rebellion" over the pact with the Greens. The voices ramping up antipathy aren’t surprising: perpetually-petulant right-winger Fergus Ewing leads the charge. Socially-conservative Kate Forbes is in on the act, while claiming she’s a “supportive backbencher”. Joanna Cherry is inevitably in the mix also, calling the Greens “totalitarian”, which may surprise the ghosts of Stalin and Hitler.

Other rumblings bear the imprimatur of Alex Salmond’s pals. The only beneficiaries of a collapse in the SNP-Green deal would be his band of Alba oddities. Salmond’s solitary hope of getting the merest sniff of electoral success depends upon chaos within the SNP prompting some nationalist voters to opt for Alba.

Read more: What New Zealand teaches us about Scotland's SNP-Green deal

These are the greasy mechanics of nationalist power-brokering. Underpinning it all is the desperation of the SNP leadership. The party knows its back is to the wall. Opinion polls go south. Everything the Government touches turns to junk. Scandal remains a stubborn backdrop. Glister is gone; only the rust beneath remains.

So it’s easy to imagine that if backbench mutterings turn into actual rebellion, rather than the gum-flapping it currently is, then a panicked membership might indeed push Yousaf to cut ties.

Do the Greens deserve the hate? To some extent they’re the authors of their own misfortune. But the idea that green policies are wicked is nonsense. In case nobody has checked, we’re in the era of climate change. It’s happening. Opposing green policies is like running a razor over your throat, and the throats of your children and yet-to-be-born grandchildren.

What’s even more remarkable is the sheer political vacuity of those in the SNP longing to dump the Greens. Forget the environment for a moment - let's chuck altruism under the bus, as so many politicians tend to do. Let’s focus on pure Machiavellianism. The Greens give the SNP a Holyrood majority. It’s all but impossible for the SNP to get legislation passed as it is; with no Greens in government they wouldn’t stand a chance.

Claims that Alex Salmond could govern comfortably leading a minority administration are just baloney. Salmond’s minority government, crucially propped up by Green support, ran between 2007-11 - significantly before the referendum. After 2014 everything changed: politics turned brutally tribal (for that, the SNP must take the blame, it chose to push for a referendum, after all).

There’s no way opposition parties would now help the SNP get any vote over the line. Scotland is already in political stasis. Without Green support, Holyrood would become as moribund as Stormont. Before 2014, there was a working relationship with the Westminster Government - as proven by the granting of a referendum. Now, there’s a state of cold war, with Conservatives gunning for any law coming from Edinburgh.

Dumping the Greens would carpet-bomb the notion of a Yes majority at Holyrood. Opponents - in Edinburgh and Westminster - could simply say "yeah, you claim there’s a Yes majority, but you just kicked your fellow indy supporters out of government, you’re a mess’"

Ejecting the Greens would also tell the public that social and economically conservative right-wingers in the SNP were in control. The party’s decline in support - as polling-god John Curtice found - is down to the leadership contest more than police investigations. The leadership contest sickened many progressive voters, disgusted by some of the ugly views that came to light.

Worst of all, the entire environmental underpinnings of the Scottish Government would just disappear without the Greens. The SNP could even end up being seen as anti-environment. Not wise when 71% of the public supports curtailing fossil fuel emissions.

However, while it might not be good or wise to kick the Greens out of government, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t real trouble brewing for the party. With the SNP in such disarray, the Greens should worry. They make perfect scapegoats. Their sacrifice offers a chance to claim "re-set’"

Read more: Will we be shrieking about eco zealots when Scotland is under water?

The Greens haven’t made many friends. They’ve singularly failed to build consensus around policy. Their ideas may be good, but they’re also meaningless if Greens can’t convince others of their merit. Politics is the art of convincing. The Green’s fatal flaw is this: they’re so convinced they’re right (and on the environment they are right) that they believe they don’t need to convince anyone else. That’s Sophoclean levels of irony.

On heat pumps, deposit return, and marine protection areas, they failed to explain policy, and win over key constituencies - like business for DRS, and coastal communities for marine protection. The Greens appear to think diplomacy is for losers; that compromise is sinful. It’s a self-lacerating form of arrogance and superiority, and shows a lack of nous when it comes to political communication.

If the Greens don’t learn to reach out, you must ask if they really deserve their role in government. What does it profit anyone to be right, but to convince nobody that they are right?

Read more: Tory attack on DRS is proxy war to destroy devolution

Not long before the Greens struck their deal with the SNP, I spoke to James Shaw, leader of the New Zealand Greens, about his party’s experience of entering government with Jacinda Ardern. His advice was telling. He said Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater should be prepared to “eat a few dead rats” when it comes to political compromise. If they made the alliance work, then the Scottish Greens would see their vote rise; if they blew it, they’d become “political roadkill” trundled over by the SNP.

Opponents also branded NZ Greens “the lunatic fringe”, but they turned that around and became seen as “responsible partners in government, who stretched that government in our direction, but didn’t overplay our hand”. Most of all, though, NZ’s Greens made their pact work by achieving real goals in their first term. “We were effective … We weren’t unreasonable. That’s why our vote went up.”

Perhaps it’s too late for the Greens to avoid being sacrificed by a Government desperate for "re-set’" Or perhaps, they can listen with a little humility to friendly advice from down under and carry out something of a ‘re-set’ themselves.