Glasgow has always known how to resist.
A city shaped by industrial struggle, radical politics and a fierce instinct to protect its own, it has earned its reputation as a city of protest. From the Red Clydeside rent strikes to the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in, its streets and its people have long pushed back against the concentration of power in the hands of the few.
It is hard to imagine a more fitting backdrop for the Scottish Greens’ Spring Conference 2026. Unashamedly focused on the redistribution of power and wealth, it felt like a party that genuinely believes its moment has arrived. It may well have.
A movement that’s growing
The Green Party of England and Wales, led by Zack Polanski, has experienced something close to a political earthquake in recent months – membership surging to 195,000 by February 2026*, roughly one in every 308 people in England and Wales. The Scottish Greens are on a parallel, if quieter, trajectory. Party figures put membership at 9,235 in December 2025 – one in every 595 people in Scotland – the highest in almost a decade and still climbing.
Both figures point to a growing frustration with the status quo. In a political culture where apathy has become the default, joining anything is an act of resistance. There is a growing sense that now is the time for a politics of hope, equality and a radical rebalancing of power.
The elephant in the room and in Scottish waters
Co-leader Ross Greer opened with something that should have generated far more mainstream coverage than it did.
“Just a few weeks ago, Trump’s military abducted two individuals from Scottish waters,” he told the conference. “Their military forces came into our waters and took people – in defiance of a Scottish court order – and we were the only party to object.”
Let that land for a second. A foreign military entered Scottish waters, defied a court order, removed people – and the political response from most of Holyrood was, effectively, silence. Greer described the emergency parliamentary statement that followed as “the most surreal half hour I’ve experienced as an MSP”. A Scottish Government so visibly cowed it wasn’t even willing to utter Trump’s name.
“The behaviour of MSPs, of government ministers in our parliament is being affected,” he said. “It’s being infected by the rise in fascism elsewhere.”
It’s a striking thing to say in a conference hall. It is also, increasingly, hard to argue with.
Redistribution isn’t a dirty word
Both co-leaders were unambiguous: this is the party of redistribution – of power, wealth, and agency – and they aren’t embarrassed to say so.
Greer put the scale of inequality plainly. The top 2% of people in Scotland hold more wealth than the bottom half of the population combined – more than two and a half million people. The manifesto will propose new taxes on Amazon warehouse operations, big banks, and casinos. Council tax – regressive, outdated, universally disliked – will be scrapped and replaced.
Co-leader Gillian Mackay centred on childcare – not as abstract policy, but as lived reality. The Greens are proposing funded childcare extended to all children from two immediately, and from six months old by the end of the next parliament – a funded place for 43,000 more children.
“Too many parents, but especially mums, are forced into impossible choices,” she said. “Too many are being saddled with nursery fees that cost more than the mortgage.”
It’s the kind of policy that rarely generates headlines. It should.
Calling out the hypocrisy
Mackay didn’t shy away from naming names. She called out “the Jim Ratcliffs of the world – those who know the cost of everything but the value of nothing and try to stoke divisions from their mansions in Monaco.” In a political culture full of vague references to ‘elites’ and ‘vested interests’, there’s something clarifying about pointing at a specific type and saying: this is what we’re talking about.
Reform UK loomed over the whole day. The Greens know this election could see the far right win seats at Holyrood for the first time. Mackay was direct. “You don’t beat Reform by copying them. You do it by standing up to them and taking them on.”
Breaking through the conditioned apathy
Greer acknowledged something politicians usually paper over. Speaking during an open table discussion, he reflected that the political system has been “designed to alienate and create apathy,” and asked a question without an easy answer: “At every level – how do we design a politics that makes you feel a part of it?”
For many people – particularly younger voters more likely to look towards the Greens – the future feels like something happening to them rather than something they shape. Fifteen years of austerity, gutted community services, the manufactured drip of outrage and division. These things don’t just cause material harm. They cause learned helplessness.
Mackay offered the day’s most disarming moment on this front – telling conference she had voted ‘No’ in the 2014 independence referendum.
“I’ve been wrong before,” she said simply. “Because I believed the things we were told by Westminster.”
It was exactly what Holly Bruce had signalled in her introduction to the day – a rebuttal against the era of stale, performative politics, its mistruths, spin and promises without delivery.
75 days left
Whether the Greens can convert authenticity into votes will be decided in less than 75 days. Greer was precise about the stakes: “Hundreds of votes out of hundreds of thousands out of millions will likely decide whether it is Reform, Labour or the Greens in second place.”
He closed with equal parts warning and invitation. “This election is going to be a contest between the politics of hope and the politics of hate. We are that hope.”
The membership surge suggests many people are starting to believe that. The question – as it always is – is whether belief translates into action.
The Scottish Parliament election takes place on 7 May 2026.
*Scottish Green Party membership figures are self-reported by the party.
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