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Hello and welcome to Coffey House Scots.

My name is Lucy Dunn and I'm joined with a Spectators political

editor Katie balls and Spectator writer in Times columnist Ian McWher. It's been a turbulent

few weeks in Scottish politics and it's all come to head today with hums the use of

announcing his resignation. Ian can you take us through what's happened over the past few

weeks and how we've actually got to this point? Well tensions had been growing

within the coalition between the Greens and the SMP for some time,

mainly over a succession of policy failures, some of which the Greens were implicated in the deposit return scheme, there's a

gender recognition reform bill, the Hate Crime Act.

And there was a feeling growing, I think, that this relationship between the Greens and the

SMP could well have been coming to the end of its natural life because a lot of people

on the SMP have been complaining but the Greens were the tail wagging the dog.

I think it came to a head though perhaps surprisingly not over independence and not over even the abandonment of the the recent climate targets but over this vexed issue of transgenderism and specifically the

caste report.

It seems to have been the coalition of the Greens, Patrick Harvey's refusal to accept the validity of the

caste report and to continue calling for opposing the idea of a pause on puberty blockers.

That seems to have been the issue that really led to the final breakup.

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