Three months ago, the Scottish Green Party enjoyed its finest moment since devolution.
The progressive, eco-conscious party doubled its representation in Holyrood and secured two constituency seats for the first time ever.
At the count at the Royal Highland Hall in Ingliston, I watched with my fellow media hacks as the party’s Edinburgh-based supporters swung from the rafters in celebration.
They had reason to, of course, electing a total of four MSPs, including Lorna Slater’s historic victory over cabinet minister Angus Robertson in Edinburgh Central.
Now, the Edinburgh Greens face their first big test since the heady days of May, as a pair of by-elections loom in the Portobello/Craigmillar and Southside/Newington wards.
Voters will cast their ballots on September 3, and the Greens are determined to snatch the seats from the SNP. The party of government prompted the by-elections after newly-elected MSPs Simita Kumar and Kate Campbell resigned from the council in June.
Meanwhile, Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay’s party has placed its hopes in the capital on the shoulders of a computer scientist and a self-employed gardener.
Lorenzo Martinico is standing in Portobello/Craigmillar, while Isabella Gastel Alejandre is contesting Southside/Newington.
Over drinks at the Newsroom bar on Leith Street (I have gone for an Irn-Bru), I sit down and ask the pair, young and easy to talk to, about their hopes for the city’s future.
Ms Gastel Alejandre, a maths graduate who now works as a gardener, takes a sip of her tea.
“I look around and I see and feel the effects of the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis and the rise of hate crimes for immigrants, and I suppose I want to combat that,” she tells me.
“I feel the uncertainty of not knowing when you're going to have to leave Edinburgh because I didn't grow up here and I wasn't born here, but it's where my community is and my home.
“I know it's really difficult to live your life without knowing what future you can envision. So I would like to work to build Edinburgh into a welcoming city and a city that's an example of affordability and sustainability.”
I can empathise with this view, myself an immigrant from the United States with a similarly occluded future.
Her counterpart, Mr Martinico, a campaigner and activist in co-operative spaces, formerly worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh.
“As it became clear that the far right was becoming more prominent, I thought it'd be important to have sensible voices to combat the rhetoric,” he says when I ask why he decided to stand for election.
“I really wanted to be a voice for my community that actually lives there, engages with people, and goes to all the community events … I am already doing that,” he adds, taking a swig of his lemonade.
Both candidates say that voters have become disillusioned by the electoral process, and no longer believe that their representatives have their best interests at heart.
They want to change that.
Ms Gastel Alejandre tells me: “There's a lot of people who feel like the council is spending money on things that don't affect them and don't really help them. But I also think that we need to help people with the things that they're struggling with right now … which is why the Greens are trying to work on rent controls."
Likewise, Mr Martinico says the council should use the powers granted in the Community Wealth Building Act to invest directly into local communities.
“It doesn't really mandate councils to do very much,” he says. “But if we have the level of ambition to actually properly invest into our public services by spending the money that we're already spending, either from investment in our pensions or all the money that the council and other institutions are spending, actually invest them into our local area, that could unlock a lot of potential in terms of building.”
I ask them about the big picture. The pair are bellwethers of a sort, after all.
And in what is expected to be a fragmented chamber with as many as six parties holding seats, every councillor matters.
“I think we're seeing a lot of positive responses,” Mr Martinico tells me.
“We've seen [wildfires] across the summer at Arthur’s Seat and in the Cairngorms. Climate change is real, it's coming. We're the only party that has any kind of credible solutions to that. Nicola Sturgeon herself said this week that the SNP are basically abandoning the left-of-centre credentials that she was championing.
“They're probably going to support more drilling in the North Sea, as will Labour. So people are obviously quite concerned about that because we know it has a real effect.”
The growing number of AI data centres is also a concern, Ms Gastel Alejandre adds.
“People are really opposed to it,” she says. “Edinburgh Council announced a moratorium before recess, but there's only so much that it can legally do.
"We really need Parliament to say something.
“The Green councillors in Edinburgh work pretty closely with the MSPs, which is very easy to do because we're in the same city. [We want to work] together to try and get Parliament to move on that.”
Mr Martinico, a computer scientist by trade, cautions: “ I don't think it's something that we can invest in.
“Everyone's hoping that this is going to be the key to public service reform. It's not.
“There might be small things that they can [use to improve], but we always have to have an in-depth assessment of the risk in terms of climate, our data being sent to these companies, and the potential of being locked into these contracts.”
Indeed, the Scottish Government recently ruled that an AI data centre planned for South Gyle could not proceed until it completed an environmental impact assessment.
As our conversation draws to a close, I ask both to identify the biggest challenge faced by the people of Edinburgh.
Mr Martinico pinpoints the homelessness crisis.
He notes: “There are 6,000 families in temporary accommodation. We shut down the wait list more than a year ago. We definitely need to put capital investment into building council housing and other forms that are affordable in the long term.”
Read more:
- 'Disingenuous' messaging and half-baked apologies: How Angus Robertson lost his seat
- Is Nicola Sturgeon planning to leave the SNP for the Greens?
- Who is standing in Edinburgh council by-elections after SNP resignations?
“One big thing that comes to mind is the tourism industry,” Ms Gastel Alejandre remarks.
“I think we're maybe coming to a point where we have to consider whether we're at the limit, because obviously there is a limit of how much we can sustainably sort of have.”
As I leave the Newsroom and turn onto Princes Street, surrounded by throngs of tourists in the sweltering August heat, I think of the future.
Political control of Edinburgh will not be decided on September 3, 2026.
Yet, the results will prove to be the first major data points ahead of next May's battle to determine the next council administration.
That has to count for something.
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