Patrick Harvie: growth should not be a single metric (pic: Terry Murden)
Scottish Green party co-leader Patrick Harvie tells TERRY MURDEN that he is not anti-business but has a different view on growth
On the face of it, SNP leader Humza Yousaf’s claim that a vote for the Greens at the upcoming general election would be a “wasted vote” indicates a steady unravelling of an already fragile partnership in the Holyrood government. Claims of betrayal may be inevitable but misunderstand his reason for distancing himself from his colleagues in government.
Mr Yousaf is taking a practical approach to a ‘winner takes all’ electoral system that takes no prisoners and leaves the losers out in the cold. He is drawing on voting evidence that despite their intention to field a record number of candidates, the Greens do not have enough support to win any seats in a first past the post system. His concern is that the Greens will only succeed in splitting the pro-independence lobby and hand victory to their opponents.
However, some would argue that Mr Yousaf would improve his own standing by finding a way to work better with the Greens, not on fighting to split the UK, but on the poor relationship that both have with business to build a consensus around growth, investment, and on the climate crisis.
The Greens are digging in their heels and positioning themselves around a climate and economic ‘fairness’ agenda they accuse all the other parties of abandoning.
At his party’s spring conference this month co-leader Patrick Harvie responded to criticism from the Liberal Democrats that the Greens were themselves guilty of failing to hit key carbon targets by making a robust declaration of a need for the government to “reset” the climate action timetable. As such, the Greens will be shifting the agenda away from the constitution and on to their core purpose. It will also be the party’s intention to effectively embarrass business into doing more.
Climate action is inevitably a responsibility for business as well as politicians but getting the two to work together is fraught with tension, not least over the need to make the transition while keeping the wheels of the economy turning. Few disagree with the need to tackle the climate emergency. It is the means and the timetable for hitting the hallowed net zero target that divides opinion, largely between the idealists and the pragmatists.
Mr Yousaf may believe Green supporters are wasting their votes, but in the words of Green MSP Ross Greer, every vote for the Scottish Greens is a vote to put people and planet ahead of corporate profits. As indicated by Mr Greer’s comment, the party continues to be run by those who see profit as a dirty word and business as something driven only by greed and self-satisfaction.
There is certainly a virtue in standing up for economic fairness, and somebody has to oppose those who stand too firmly in the way of achieving climate objectives, but the danger in policies that would ultimately erode the competitiveness and even the viability of some businesses will benefit no one.
Mr Harvie told me in an interview at last week’s party conference that there is a need to take a different approach to growth. It should, he says, embrace factors beyond greater output and be seen in the context of a more contented society.
However, he denies that the party wants an immediate shut down of the oil and gas industry and that what is needed is more investment, but investment in the “right places”, such as renewables.
I point out that the energy industry argues that it needs to keep investing in more exploration and production of oil and gas fields in order to raise the money needed to make the transition.
“So we have to keep destroying the planet in order to save it?” he replies. “By having one more roll of the fossil fuel dice, that would be global suicide.”
He says Scotland has an abundance of renewable energy sources and is already a net exporter. Green hydrogen will help power industry where decarbonisation cannot be achieved through other means and will be another valuable export commodity.
Significantly, he says: “It is not a question of switching off overnight. It is about shifting at a rapid pace to a manageable and just transition.
“You don’t do that by doubling down on an industry that is coming to its end and the fossil fuel economy is coming to its end either because we choose to end it fast enough and invest in a vibrant green economy or because we end ourselves because of the climate crisis.”
He further argues that there is “huge innovation” in Scotland to produce the biofuels needed to replace fossil fuels in the manufacture of products that have depended on oil and gas.
Patrick Harvie addresses the party’s conference in Edinburgh (pic: Terry Murden)
During his address to delegates at the conference, he accused the housing lobby of spreading misinformation and said that claims that the rent cap would lead to a reduction in properties available “have proven false with the number of rent properties increasing.”
Speaking afterwards, he says the opposition to his policies, which includes those who say his housing bill was more of a “tenants’ rights charter” is “overstated”. He adds: “Clearly there will be landlords who will never be fans of rent controls, others say it can give them stability of income. But few people would look at our housing system and the private rented sector in particular and say it was effectively meeting the human right to have adequate and affordable housing.”
He says the issue is not just about supply, but the right kind of housing. “I see places going for two grand a month rent. That is not where the social need is. We have to make sure we build for social need not for the profit of those who get the uplift from land values.
“We have serious problems with empty homes and we have given powers to councils to put empty homes back into use. In terms of investment we have to join the dots and make sure we get investment in affordable housing.”
In terms of the Scottish government stimulating the market he says Holyrood has suffered from a “massive cut” to the capital budget forced on it by Westminster.
His comments merely sparked another strong reaction from landlords and others who claim he is deluded and doesn’t understand the dynamics of the sector. It is not the only business and consumer group to find the Greens’ agenda just a tad difficult to assimilate to the way we live. Motorists and food and drink producers are among others that have crossed swords with the party.
Asked for his response to claims that the party is broadly “anti-business” and “anti-growth” he laughs and says it is a case of wanting a fairer deal for tenants and a change of mindset together with faster action on meeting green targets that cannot be ignored. He adds that, far from being against business, he is working with those who are pursuing these objectives.
Is the Green party anti-growth?
“Growth is a very narrow metric,” he says. “For decades now, not just Greens but many others have said that simply measuring GDP growth by counting all the transactions in the economy and just saying we need more of everything is up for debate along with the idea that everlasting GDP growth is possible on a finite planet.”
This alternative definition of GDP is something that clearly goes to the heart of his economic thinking and he drives home the message that there is another way.
“Fundamentally, it doesn’t measure what is generating healthy communities. What is generating opportunities for those who have been denied them. What kind of food we are producing. Is it food that boosts our GDP but undermines our health or food that boosts our GDP and improves our health and creates an environment we want our children to grow up in?
“The main objection we have is the myopic idea that growth is a single metric. You put it on a pedestal and as long as that number is going up you think you are achieving a better economy. Underneath that single metric is a huge amount of detail about how successful and viable is our economy in supporting human wellbeing.”
It is evident that these thoughts are ones shared by the SNP, or maybe ones the SNP has been encouraged to adopt, not least in its now regular mantra of putting fairness and wellbeing at the centre of economic policy.
Harvie goes on: “For decades a case has been made, not just by us, that GDP measures everything except things that give our lives meaning and quality. Part of that is about whether there is enough money in the economy to meet people’s needs, but it is also about how fairly it is distributed. How much of that economic activity is getting to the people who need it?
“There are have been periods of growth where poverty has gone up and also when it has gone down so that tells you that growth in itself is not the solution. It is what is happening underneath that single number of GDP.”
He mentions the collapse of the deposit return scheme, the proposed recycling scheme, as a “slap in the face” for businesses who invested in it. He blames the Conservative government’s decision to veto the scheme as “deliberate vandalism” that “wasted hundreds of millions of pounds.”
He adds: “So who’s the anti-business party in that scenario? If there is an anti-business party in that story it is the one with the blue rosettes. And wasn’t it Boris Johnson who said ‘bugger business’?”
Actually, the former PM used the ‘f word’, but the point was made.
Terry Murden held senior positions at The Sunday Times, The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and The Northern Echo and is now editor of Daily Business
Leave a Reply