Patrick Harvie, the UK’s longest serving parliamentary leader, has announced he is standing down as co-convener of the Scottish Greens after nearly 17 years in the role.
An MSP since 2003, Harvie, 52, had recently taken leave of absence from Holyrood for an operation and recuperation. He announced on Wednesday he would not contest this summer’s party leadership election.
The MSP said it had been “an extraordinary privilege” to have led the party. He became the first Green politician in the UK to serve in government, along with his co-convener, Lorna Slater, in a power-sharing deal he brokered with Nicola Sturgeon in 2021.
In a statement, he said: “At the start of devolution, few people regarded the Greens as a serious political force. But as we have grown, learned and developed we have become the most significant, sustained new movement in Scottish politics for generations. Given the growing urgency of the climate emergency, that movement is greatly needed.”
As a junior minister, Harvie introduced a rent freeze and new housing rights, winning commitments from the Scottish government to ambitious public transport policies including free bus travel for under-21s and a pilot project to abolish peak rail fares, which has since been discontinued.
The power-sharing deal collapsed in acrimony after Humza Yousaf, Sturgeon’s successor as SNP leader and first minister, decided many Green policies were damaging the SNP’s popularity and unilaterally ended the agreement.
Under Harvie’s co-leadership the Scottish Greens shifted to become an avowedly pro-independence party and heavily influenced moves at Holyrood to increase taxes on the better off. He also vigorously championed trans rights, adopting a stance that led some senior figures to quit the party and complaints that free speech was being stifled.
Scotland has come under sustained criticism from the UK committee on climate change for failing to enact effective climate policies, including during the Greens’ period in government.
It is unclear whether Slater will stand for re-election as co-convener. Two other MSPs, Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay, are tipped as likely candidates. Greer is the most senior, while Mackay has won plaudits for pushing through Scotland’s new abortion clinic buffer-zone laws and on single use vapes.
Carla Denyer, the co-leader of the Green party of England and Wales, said Harvie’s legacy “will be marked every time a young person gets on public transport free of charge; with every renter who is able to keep a roof over their heads because of protections that Patrick secured; and with every kilowatt of clean renewable power that Scotland produces because of Green policies”.
