The strange greenwashing of Nicola Sturgeon

It was only a matter of time. When the Scottish Green party entered government alongside the SNP in August, it was clear Nicola Sturgeon would use the party as a shield against her questionable record and stance on the environment. The surprise is that it happened so quickly and so blatantly.

This week we had the extraordinary situation of the Scottish Greens attacking Greenpeace for daring to push the First Minister to explicitly come out against exploitation of the Cambo oil field off Shetland. Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie said Greenpeace was unfairly criticising Sturgeon and is ‘not particularly politically active in Scotland’.

Ramping up the ‘othering’ of Greenpeace, Harvie’s fellow Green MSP, Ross Greer, then did an interview where he said it’s ‘fair to say Greenpeace don’t really understand Scotland’ because ‘they’ve never had a permanent presence here’. He accused Greenpeace of ‘landing here in Scotland having spent very little time trying to understand our situation’, and said the organisation had ‘come here to lecture us on the action that we’re taking’.