Brig spoke to Mark Ruskell, the Scottish Green’s lead candidate for the Mid Scotland and Fife regional list, as the party did not stand a constituency candidate for Stirling.
Ruskell has been involved with the Scottish Greens for decades, first as a youth party member at the University of Stirling. He later represented Mid Scotland and Fife in the Scottish Parliament between 2003 and 2007, before being elected to represent Dunblane and Bridge of Allan in Stirling Council in 2012. He was re-elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2016 and stood down from the Council in 2017 to focus on his responsibilities as an MSP.
On the lack of a constituency candidate, Ruskell said the party was “focusing in on the regional lists”, as they have a “really good opportunity” to elect two regional Green MSPs in Mid Scotland and Fife for the first time.
Discussing the party’s track record, Ruskell pointed to legislation from the Greens’ time in coalition with the SNP, including “reforms that protected those in the private rented sector”, such as rent caps, and the free bus travel for under-22s. He said, if re-elected, the party intends to expand this policy in phases, first to under-25s, then under-30s.
He said that strengthening rights for renters and workers was also a large focus for him, especially in terms of ensuring a consistent quality of housing and access to collective bargaining across different sectors.
Meanwhile, he was supportive of a four-day work week with no loss of pay in the public sector, suggesting it improves productivity and employee health.
On independence, he said that the Scottish Greens “are still an independence-supporting party” and will continue to “make the case for more powers for Scotland”. However, he recognised that on the doorstep, people were more interested in “day-to-day issues” such as “the cost-of-living crisis, precarious employment, poor quality of housing, [and] expensive housing”.
He said: “Although independence would certainly bring… more powers to Scotland to enable us to invest… in more social housing and redesign the energy market, these are a little distant from the everyday concerns that people have right now.”
He said that Zack Polanski and the English and Welsh Greens had taken the green movement into “a new space in terms of public support”, particularly on social media, and that mixed with the Scottish Greens’ track record in government, this had “all the ingredients for a great election result”.
Politics Editor
Journalism and Politics 4th Year
Stockport
