box goes Green

For many it's a tough call in Gordon: an experienced and competent incumbent Liberal Democrat; an articulate and engaging SNP candidate; and a proven Labour councillor who stood against the Iraq war. Barney Crockett even boasted that the current government is the most "redistributionist" since Atlee's in '45: you don't hear that from Mandy.

But none of them will get my vote this time. The Green manifesto is a remarkable, challenging document that promises to change the rules of the game not just the players. They will not get in here, as in many constituencies, but for me it is important that they get as many votes as possible, votes which will encourage the party to focus their sparse resources here, to field candidates in future, and, locally, to challenge the outrageous political consensus on Trump's desecration of our natural inheritance.

The clincher was this elegant precis of Green political philosophy from Patrick Harvie. In an era in which discredited statism has made space for technocratic neoliberalism, the Greens offer a vision of prosperity that goes beyond growth and acquisition, a vision of personhood that is more nuanced than that of competitive, self-interested monads, and a vision of politics that is robust, radical and desperately needed.