Former Green leader jumps ship to Labour

Another day, another drama. As general election campaign shenanigans continue, it now transpires that Robin Harper — the UK’s first ever Green parliamentarian and former leader of the Scottish Greens — has jumped ship to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party.

With just over three and a half weeks to go until polling day, the veteran politician has announced he is endorsing the Shadow Scotland Secretary, Ian Murray, in Edinburgh South. The writing was on the wall when the ex-Edinburgh MP revealed last week that Harper was helping as a ‘volunteer’ during his campaigning. Murray — who until last year’s Rutherglen by-election was the only Scottish Labour MP since 2019 — has held the seat since 2010 and achieved a majority of over 11,000 in the 2019 poll. The Shadow Scotland Secretary is indeed expected to retain his seat this time and even increase his vote share, and adding an extra member to his campaign team certainly won’t hurt.

In a letter to local city-dwellers, Harper slammed the SNP’s record on the environment and backed Labour’s GB Energy plan:

I desperately want to see the back of this Conservative government, who have crashed our economy, degraded our political life and failed to tackle climate change. The SNP, and until recently their Green coalition partners, have also failed to take action on the environment. John Swinney has failed to rule out supporting new oil and gas licences and the SNP have rejected Labour’s calls for a windfall tax on record oil and gas profits.

Investment in renewable energy would be paid for by a windfall tax on the oil and gas giants making record profits during a cost-of-living crisis, something that the SNP oppose. This election provides us with a now-or-never opportunity to remove the Tories from power and end the chaos, failure and inaction that has marked their fourteen years in government. Only Labour is able to do this across the UK and only Labour has a plan to halt environmental destruction.

And it’s not the first time Harper has made headlines. In tough reading for the Scottish Greens last year the former leader caused controversy when he quit the party altogether, announcing that Patrick Harvie’s barmy army had ‘lost the plot’. Writing a scathing letter to his successors, the octogenarian berated the party’s leftwards move ‘into the gap’ vacated by the Scottish Socialist party, the former politician reminded his ex-colleagues: ‘Elected representatives should listen as much as they shout.’ Ouch.

Might Harper’s presence in Murray’s campaign team convince undecided eco-activists to put their money on Labour? Stay tuned…