Greens in second place?! Get ready for Holyrood's strangest election ever

Unlikely, but true that they both spent time this week giving some thought to solving the problem of Scotland’s overcrowded jails, and neither solution has much chance of becoming reality.

OK, so the comparison doesn’t really stretch much further than that, with the Tory chief arguing that recidivist neds should be exported along with whisky and smoked salmon to serve their sentence abroad, while the Greens candidate for Edinburgh North Eastern and Leith wants to throw open the gates.

Utopianism underpins most of the Greens’ world view, but Ms Neven’s plan to let misunderstood but otherwise loveable murderers, rapists and paedophiles roam the streets knowing their collars can never be felt again took it to new levels. All because jails aren’t very nice places and don’t prevent repeat offending, as if their sole function is rehabilitation and nothing to do with public protection and punishment. The Scottish Sentencing Council should be told.

READ MORE: Euan McColm: Rise of populist extremists Reform and the Greens threatens political centre

Doorstep acid attack

The Conservative plan to have Scottish convicts serve their time in foreign jails, just as Sweden has been able to send their lags to Estonia, has no chance of implementation because, although the SNP likes to give the impression that it has responsibility for foreign affairs, the Scottish Government cannot strike extradition deals and there’s a Labour government in Westminster, but plenty of people will have sympathy with the notion of packing the bad guys off to somewhere far, far away.

Even the Greens leadership conceded that there will always be bams, as Scot Squad’s Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson would say, who need banging up, so Ms Neven’s dream of a chokey-free Scotland will never become reality either.

But I do wonder that if a hitman turned up at Ms Nevens’ front door dressed as a postman and threw acid in her face while her daughter cowered behind her – as happened to Mr Findlay in 2017 after a long career as an investigative reporter exposing gangsters in the pages of the Sunday Mail and the Scottish Sun − her attitude to criminal justice might have more in common with the Scottish Conservative leader. Turning the other cheek under such circumstances would have had severe consequences.

William ‘Basil’ Burns’ reward was to have his teeth punched out on Mr Findlay’s doorstep, and then to be jailed for 15 years, but Ms Nevens would presumably argue that, having previously been jailed for six years for using a gun to threaten a Marks & Spencer security guard who stopped him for stealing a cake, and receiving his first 15-stretch after shooting a woman in a Paisley post office robbery, that there clearly was no point in prison.

Monty Python made real

In Ms Neven’s world, I can almost hear Monty Python’s Michael Palin shouting “Help, help, come and see the violence inherent in the system” as the judge, knowing jails are now history, peers over half-moon glasses at the accused. “Basil, you poor, traumatised wee lamb, despite your other previous convictions for assault, firearms offences and carrying offensive weapons, you are free to go. And if it’s not too much trouble, could you leave your machete and Glock semi-automatic at reception?”

But we are going to have to get used to this kind of stuff because, at number two on their regional list, there is a high likelihood that Ms Nevens − who specialises in participatory, feminist and intersectional approaches to research and facilitation, according to her Linkedin page, which sounds just like the expertise Holyrood needs − will be joining Lorna Slater in Holyrood as a Lothian MSP.

At least there could be an entertaining competition with another Green MSP, the former Edinburgh Green councillor Maggie Chapman, who doesn’t care much for the legal system either, for the accolade of the most bonkers MSP at the Herald’s Politician of the Year awards. From what has been seen of some of the Reform candidates so far, it’s a category they may well need to create.

SNP may steer clear of Green extremists

And while the latest poll again shows the SNP so far in front that the winner is beyond doubt, the solidification of Green support at 16 per cent on the regional list vote and a Labour slump by four points to 15 puts them in with a real chance of becoming the second biggest party. Analysis of the Ipsos survey predicts the Greens could have 17 MSPs, two more than Reform and one more than Labour, an utter disaster for Labour leader Anas Sarwar, and unquestionably career-ending if that’s how it turns out.

So outbursts like Ms Nevens are important not because voters might turn away from the Greens – if anything they could pick up even more support from the young and disaffected who are giving up on Labour − but because such extremism makes it even less likely that the SNP will do business with them in the probable event that the nationalists fall just short of a majority.

However, unless significant progress is made in housing and economic growth, Green support is likely to rise and looking at their election website, their ecological roots are only a part of the programme.

New taxes on private schools, an ‘Amazon Tax’ on online businesses, a four-day week and the scrapping of NHS dental charges have nothing to do with the environment but are just good old-fashioned, high-tax, low-growth, anti-aspiration, hard-left socialism which would contribute to the end of any chance of Scotland being a competitive country. But then that’s probably the point.