Scottish Greens co-leaders on extremism, wealth and Dungeons & Dragons
In the latest in our series of leader interviews, The Scotsman has been learning just how geeky things get in the Scottish Greens.
Over the course of the election campaign a number of politicians have branded the Scottish Greens “extremists” for their views on how things should be.
However its co-leaders Gillian Mackay and Ross Greer say their opponents who are not fighting hard enough to tackle child poverty are the real extremists.
The Scotsman sat down for a game of election Dungeons and Dragons with the two party leaders to hear all about their manifesto - and to see whether the decisions made in the fantasy world can play out in the real world.
“I think extremism is looking at our climate breakdown and looking at a country as rich as this one where one in five children are in poverty and thinking that’s fine,” said Mr Greer.
“To us, that would be the extremist position.
“We think the only logical, rational and only decent and moral thing to do is to tackle these crises that we face.
“For example we want higher business rates on big banks like Barclays, JPMorgan and Standard Life, and use that money to fund staff in our schools and social care services.
“Proponents want to call that extremism - they’re welcome to do so.
“I’m pretty sure if you went out there and asked most people on the street if they think banks should pay a little bit more tax to put more classroom assistants and teachers in schools, I think we know what the vast majority of people’s answer would be.”
The Scottish Greens are polling well just now, with some even suggesting they could come second behind the SNP on May 7. They also have eyes on their first constituency win in places like Edinburgh Central and Glasgow Southside.
“We could take over the world with more MSPs,” Ms Mackay joked. “We have delivered a lot but that doesn’t shorten the to-do list, it just means we can cover more things.
“We would really like a South Scotland MSP so everyone has a Green MSP and having more MSPs in Edinburgh and Glasgow would be great to add to the team.”
Mr Greer added: “When I joined the party there were more students in my high school than in the party, but now we have 10,000 members and record high polling.
“I think a lot of it’s because they can see what Greens have delivered, like free bus travel for young people, scrapping peak rail fares, and expanding free school meals, stuff that saves people money and tackles the climate crisis.”
This is the latest in The Scotsman’s series of leader interviews which try and lift the curtain on what the politicians are really like when they are off the clock.
There is no prize for finding the geekiest politicians in the 2026 election campaign - Ms Mackay and Mr Ross are wearing that particular moniker with pride. In fact, when playing Dungeons and Dragons they are known as Azara the wizard and Sor the paladin.
“We are nerds of unparalleled proportions,” said Sor (Mr Greer to the voting public).
“Yeah,” Azara (Ms Mackay) added. “Our geekiness takes different facets between the two of us.
“I like D&D, my husband and I met doing charity Star Wars costuming, and I’m often running around various convention centres as an X-wing pilot.
“That’s what we like to do on the weekends.”
Sor added: “I’m much more of a Warhammer guy, but Star Wars is our shared passion - Star Wars is the one thing we will fall out over.
“If there was ever a split in the Scottish Greens from top to bottom, it would be over Star Wars.”
The game of D&D covered a range of political talking points, including taxes, business rates, climate change and the just transition, childcare, drugs policy, housing and LGBT+ rights.
If what played out in this fantasy game was to come true in real life, the Scottish Greens are on track for success when it comes to climate change. In D&D, players roll a 20-sided dice and the higher the score, the better the outcome - Azara managed to score ‘20’ when it came to the just transition in the game.
Azara said: “It’s all about how we give them time to move their skills to other things and making sure that we actually put some money into that transition and that there’s a proper transition in place for those communities, which we haven’t seen.
“For Grangemouth and Mossmorran in particular, they were promised jobs and not enough effort has been put into this by successive governments.”
She added: “The North Sea is not going to last forever and we should have been starting to transition when we were in primary school, not where we are now.
“We should have been well down that road by now rather than just starting right now, but we need to make sure we support these communities and getting those jobs there.”
For what has been a bit of a lacklustre election campaign, the Scottish Greens have managed to generate some headlines, particularly after the most recent televised leaders’ debate when Mr Greer got into a spat with Reform UK’s Scottish leader Malcolm Offord about how many homes, boats and cars he owns.
You can watch the full game of D&D with Celaena the druid (Political Correspondent Rachel Amery) on The Scotsman’s YouTube channel.
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