u/IntelligentCrew8406

Not sure this is such a great strategy

Introducing Isabella Gastel Alejandre, your Scottish Green Party candidate for the #SouthsideNewington by-election.

Isabella is a Southside local and Maths graduate from Edinburgh University. She currently works as a gardener.

Vote Scottish Greens [1] on Tuesday 3rd September to elect a hard-working councillor who will demand better for our city.

What are our chances here?

He’s started a petition to help fight and stay in the Greens and lift his suspension. Hope there’s more clarity and dialogue bc there deffo needs to be more transparency.

Don’t know exactly why it was unlawful when as a member he can pay membership fees and donate in other ways. Apparently might be bc he wasn’t on the electoral register maybe?

Idk if my thoughts here will get buried but Jeremy talks about Zack and the Greens toward the end of the video.

Criticisms that we've heard before many time, but he also mentions that our MPs seem unclear on their positions on foreign policy, war, millitary and NATO - I know we've had posts where it's mentioned that they have disagreements and that's healthy, but I think this brings up something else I'd wondered about when Zack took over

If you remember when he started it was all about telling better stories, and he delivered that amazing video at the beach talking about immigration, and he's made a few other videos since - talking about wealth tax etc and those are our most popular policy positions which we've developed a lot of the 'populist' rhetoric around.

However, the thing that the public trust us the least on then and now still was on defence - and Zack said that was something he wanted to do, tell a better story about what a green defence policy and vision looks like. I assumed that would mean another video but it's not our primary campaigning strategy which is fair enough. He's talked about NATO and alternative alliances, and he's briefly mentioned 'welfare not warfare' as well as diplomacy rather than nuclear weaopons which isn't from a case of a developed argument but usually something he's attacked for, which is obviously a big part of it, but the threats from other international forces aren't something we can completely abstain from just yet and it takes time. if War comes what would our policies be, how do we plan to deal with these threats? It feels like we need something more broadly substantive because people need to feel secure in our arguments, that they can trust it as a party that will defend us. Obviously it's relying on a hypothetical that's easy to fear monger about and that's largely why it;'s such a difficult topic and an easy attack line once they've gotten over drug policies etc..

How do you feel we move forward, what do you recall as being our MPs beliefs and our policy?

I remember that being a criticism of Zack that his opinion of NATO does drift away from official policy - of course the policy and the way it's communicated by the MPs is the issue according to Jeremy here. What are your thoughts on how it all comes across and where could we improve?

Do you think Ed’s plans for renewables have poorly adjusted for supporting the workers in the oil industries? Supposedly Unite have quite a lot of members from there…

I’ve also read that Burnham’s pushing back on some of the criticism of him and it sounds like Ed is making concessions of the North Sea Oil in part… so idk what to make of all this at the moment.

If he ends up losing his job as energy secretary, maybe he could support us as an independent..? Would be free to make public appearances talking up Green policies, appear on Zack’s pod, even if he’s too embedded in the government cabinet for anyone to accept him in the party (not saying he would want to join, just trying to consider the options for him to continue making an impact on environmental policy)

I’m confised bc last I saw they’d had multiple purges and they’d also made a separate LGB Labour group, does anyone know what’s going on and who’s running these elections? Is it the few people that held on keeping their head down or is it the same higher ups trying to control it all?

I’m confised bc last I saw they’d had multiple purges and they’d also made a separate LGB Labour group, does anyone know what’s going on and who’s running these elections?

Isn’t that what Scottish Parliament wants ? I’m unaware of any particular constraints from Labour Together sorts that would stop that? I presume this is an attempt to repair the damage to Scottish Labour?