Our Writer at Large, Neil Mackay, looks at the astonishing success of the Green Party in Manchester and what it means for both UK and Scottish politics.

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.

The Greens proved all their enemies wrong. Keir Starmer, Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch, the media’s entire commentariat class, Centrist Dads, and every culture warrior on Twitter. 

And they did so facing what should have been insurmountable odds. In Manchester, the Greens were up against a Reform Party backed by super-rich donors. Elitists, you could say. Farage’s party was showered with money by the likes of Claudia Rothermere, wife of the Daily Mail’s owner Viscount Rothermere. 

The Greens faced a wall of vitriol from the rightwing press while Reform has been praised and cosseted. The BBC has treated Reform like a government-in-waiting, repeatedly platforming the party on clickbait shows like Question Time, while the Greens were basically blanked.

Put bluntly, the state of British journalism is so dire these days that anything Farage says is repeated verbatim as gospel truth whilst the Greens are dismissed as fools. 

Who’s the fool now? You’ll find them sitting in the editor’s chair in London newsrooms and TV studios. 

Read more from Neil Mackay:

Murrell Memo: why should Swinney know more about this case than Scots voters?

The BBC has a serious Scotland problem but nobody is talking about it

We need a mass movement to tackle the evils of Big Tech

The Greens didn’t just win........

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