Viewpoint / Building a movement is a multi-election project
In this final Viewpoint before the Scottish election tomorrow (Thursday) Green candidate Alex Armitage responds to Jonathan Wills who last week suggested that to “get green things done”, people should vote for the SNP rather than the Greens
Tomorrow, Shetlanders will go in our thousands to polling stations across our islands to choose the politicians that will represent us in the Scottish Parliament; one politician that will exclusively represent Shetland, and seven others that will represent Shetland as part of the wider Highlands and Islands region.
For decades, Shetlanders have been told that we should vote tactically, either for the Liberal Democrats to keep out the Scottish National Party, or for the SNP, to get rid of the Lib Dems.
I’ve spoken with thousands of folk in Shetland throughout the course of this campaign and there is a huge appetite for breaking out of the status quo of this duopoly.
Folk are tired of being asked what they are voting against; they want to be asked what they are voting for.
That is the question I want to leave you with before you go and vote tomorrow.
A vote for the Greens on Thursday is a vote for a Shetland where the wealth generated by our wind, our tides and our seas stays in our communities.
It is a vote for an expansion of housing – that islanders can actually afford to live in, for tunnels, and ferries that run when we need them, and for an economy built on the long-term wellbeing of our islands rather than the quarterly profits of distant shareholders.
It is a vote for the principle that human rights are not negotiable, and that our ecology is not something to be traded away when the political weather turns.
On the regional ballot, the case is sharper still. Reform UK are highly likely to win regional MSPs in the Highlands and Islands, and a vote for the Greens is the strongest chance we have of reducing the number of Reform UK MSPs. Voting for the Scottish Greens on the regional ballot paper is an obligation for all progressive people to stop Reform UK.
On the constituency ballot, I am asking for something different.
I know some folk will hesitate because they think a Green vote in Shetland is a wasted vote. I want to challenge that idea directly.
To call a vote “wasted” is to assume that politics is only about who wins on a single Thursday night every few years – and that is far too narrow a framing.
The big strategic shifts in our society – votes for women, the welfare state, the end of Section 28, marriage equality – none of these were won in a single election. They were won by movements, sustained over decades, that kept showing up at the ballot box long before they were anywhere near power.
Every vote for those movements, in elections they had no chance of winning, was a thread that eventually became a rope strong enough to pull the country in a better direction.
That is what the Greens are offering in Shetland. Not a quick win in a single election, but a movement – rooted in communities, built election by election, through the patient work of councillors and activists engaging with issues on the ground, challenging the status quo, refusing to accept that the politics of the day is the best we can hope for.
For the Greens, building a political movement is not just about fighting one election, it is a multi-election project.
And we need that movement now more than ever. The environmental and social foundations of our society – our ecology and our human rights – are crumbling. Our politics are drifting rightward, the far-right is resurgent across the USA, Europe and Britain, and mainstream parties are softening their positions on climate, on tax fairness, and on the protections that people depend on.
The ship of our society is drifting, slowly but unmistakably, toward the rocks of a harder, colder, more divided politics. One vote – one thread – is not enough to turn it. But many threads, woven together, make a rope, strong enough to pull that ship toward safety – to secure our collective future.
Every Green vote tomorrow is a thread in that rope. None of them are wasted. Every single one tightens the line and shifts, by a small but real amount, the direction our politics is heading.
A Green vote is a marker of hope, a refusal to accept the degradation of our climate and human rights, and a signal to mainstream politicians that there are political consequences for doing so. A strong Green vote tomorrow will build a foundation for future elections to be won.
So whatever else you do tomorrow, make sure you vote. And vote for what you believe in.
Vote Green on the regional ballot to stop Reform UK.
And on the constituency ballot, vote Green to participate in the building of a lasting movement for Shetland’s future.
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