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Scottish Greens launch manifesto with wealth tax

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13:21UTC

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Key takeaway

An 89-page Green menu of free buses, wealth tax and no new oil, pitched without a fiscal-credibility claim.

The Scottish Greens published an 89-page Holyrood manifesto on 14 April 2026, launched at Barras Art and Design in Glasgow by co-leaders Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay. ¹ Headline pledges include free bus travel for all Scots, no new North Sea oil and gas licensing, 40,000 green energy jobs, free dental care, expanded childcare and a Scottish wealth tax, alongside levies on landlords, supermarkets, gambling firms and private schools.

The platform is offered against the IFS's full-sweep verdict on every Holyrood contender . Rather than defend a costing the watchdog would likely reject, The Greens chose not to claim fiscal credibility at all, a position made explicit in Patrick Harvie's remark that the concept is misleading. The document is a policy menu rather than a budget, and it is pitched as such.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The Scottish Greens published their plans for the Holyrood election on 14 April. The 89-page document includes some ambitious proposals: free bus travel for everyone in Scotland, a ban on new North Sea oil and gas extraction, 40,000 new green energy jobs, free dental care and a wealth tax on Scotland's richest. The party is led jointly by Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay, who launched the manifesto at a venue in Glasgow. Scottish Greens hold a specific place in Scottish politics: they previously supported the SNP government in a formal cooperation agreement but ended that arrangement in 2023. In the 2026 election, they are independent again and looking to win seats as coalition partners rather than government supporters.

What could happen next?

Consequence
The North Sea oil ban pledge creates a direct conflict with the SNP's position (which has not formally ruled out new licensing) and may complicate any post-election cooperation between the two parties if Holyrood produces a hung result.
Opportunity
Free bus travel as a flagship pledge targets a demographic (under-25s, over-60s, non-car-owners) that the Scottish Greens' polling suggests is disproportionately likely to vote for them, potentially boosting turnout among their target cohort.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: The 2003 Scottish Parliament election saw the Scottish Greens and Scottish Socialists publish explicitly non-costed manifestos framed as moral visions rather than fiscal programmes. Both won regional list seats on that platform. The structural parallel is not ideological but tactical: in a proportional system, a party with a strong values proposition can win representation without winning the credibility argument.

Counter-parallel: The Scottish Greens' 2011 manifesto, published with detailed costings and IFS engagement, produced their worst Holyrood result: two seats, down from seven in 2003. The correlation is not causal, but it does not support the thesis that fiscal rigour helps Green parties in Scottish elections.

Consensus view: The Institute for Welsh Affairs (IWA) noted that the Scottish Greens' decision to launch without seeking IFS pre-approval parallels the approach of the Wales Green Party, which also published its Senedd manifesto without seeking independent fiscal assessment, a deliberate positioning choice rather than an oversight.

IPPR Scotland's Carys Roberts assessed the 40,000 green energy jobs pledge as arithmetically plausible within a five-year Parliament if North Sea decommissioning work is counted as green employment, but that the number depends entirely on how the category is defined.

Counter-view: The Centre for Policy Studies' Tim Pitt argued that the Scottish Greens' wealth tax proposal (levying on assets above a threshold) has been modelled independently and would produce one-time revenues rather than the sustained income stream needed to fund recurrent spending commitments like free bus travel.

Pitt cited the French ISF wealth tax experience, which produced significant capital flight before being abolished in 2017, as a comparable structural risk for any devolved jurisdiction with porous borders to the rest of the UK.

Key tension: Whether the Scottish Greens' refusal to claim fiscal credibility represents a sustainable campaign strategy or merely defers the credibility problem to any post-election coalition negotiation.

Sources:STV News

Mentions:Scottish Greens →Ross Greer →Gillian Mackay →Parliament →Prima →Senedd →Holyrood →Wales →Green Party →Glasgow →Patrick Harvie →Scottish National Party (SNP) →

First Reported In

Update #4 · 22 Days to Go: Greens Take a Reform Seat in Kent

STV News· 15 Apr 2026

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Different Perspectives

Electoral Commission

The Electoral Commission confirmed Christopher Harborne's £9m Q3 2025 donation as the largest from a living individual in UK party finance records, noting compliance with PPERA 2000 permissibility rules; its enforcement function extends to permissibility, not scale. No party has formally challenged the declarations, leaving structural concentration of party finance without a statutory trigger for the current parliament.

Welsh Labour

Welsh Labour enters the Senedd election projected to fall from 29 seats to 12 under a closed-list PR system the party introduced, with First Minister Eluned Morgan polling below the constituency entry threshold. The party faces becoming third-largest in the chamber it redesigned, a devolution-era first.

Scottish National Party

The SNP is projected on 67 Holyrood seats, two above the majority threshold, on the first election under redrawn boundaries; John Swinney has stated a majority constitutes a mandate for a second independence referendum. A confirmed majority would reopen the constitutional question dormant since 2014 with no current Westminster route to a Section 30 order.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

MHCLG reversed the postponement of 30 elections under Divisional Court pressure, committed £63m to affected LGR areas, paid approximately £100,000 in Reform UK's legal costs, and has not published the legal advice justifying either decision. Robert Jenrick's Hansard account that prior advice already judged postponement unlawful has not been addressed or refuted by the department.

HM Government / UK-wide parties

The government frames the Representation of the People Bill as a proportionate foreign-influence response implemented at unusual speed. Reform UK holds its polling position while staying silent on crypto donation quantum. The Liberal Democrats frame the English local elections as a binary contest against Reform.

Scottish parties (SNP, Conservatives, Labour)

The SNP enters the regulated campaign as projected majority government through opposition fragmentation, not a vote surge. The Scottish Conservatives defend a manifesto the IFS dismisses and face zero constituency seats. Labour is the only party projected to retain any constituency presence beyond the SNP.