Scottish Greens are Sturgeon’s solar-powered sock puppets

When Scottish Green Party co-leader Lorna Slater urges people to vote as if ‘their future depends on it’, she’s not warning the electorate about the planet’s climate crisis. Independence is what Ms Slater, a Canadian-born engineer and trapeze artist, really craves.

Scotland’s Greens may brand themselves as guardians of the environment, but observers could be forgiven for thinking their primary political purpose is to act as the Waitrose wing of the SNP.

The Scottish Greens exist to allow middle-class revolutionaries to reconcile their belief in solidarity with their conviction that it stops at Gretna Green and their deeply-held egalitarianism with their concern that the average SNP voter is a bit council scheme. You know, the sort of people who watch EastEnders and don’t ferment their own kimchi. Scottish Greens are nationalists in every sense except that they recoil from the word itself as though from unethically-sourced hemp.

They pride themselves on their commitment to equality, which is why the party’s top job is shared between a man and a woman.