Who is the student running for Scottish Greens in the Rutherglen by-election?

The Scottish Greens announced Eadie as their candidate for the forthcoming Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election at a campaign launch outside Rutherglen Town Hall this afternoon.

Running on a campaign centred around the climate crisis, a pro-European stance, and eradicating child poverty, Eadie is a student about to embark on his final year at the University of Glasgow studying Social and Public Policy. 

It is not the student’s first time launching an election campaign – he unsuccessfully ran in a by-election to represent East Kilbride in South Lanarkshire council last month. A Labour candidate was instead elected. 

“I know that some may say I’m very young but I’ve got plenty of life experience myself, and I feel that parliament should be representative of the society it represents. If we exclude one demographic from that, like young people, then it’s not a very representative or fair democracy that we live in,” Eadie told The Herald.

Eadie, as well as his party co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, were keen to put an emphasis on his local roots at the campaign launch.

The election candidate was born in Wishaw, grew up in East Kilbride and attended school in Hamilton before starting his studies at Glasgow University.

At the young age of 20, Eadie will not only now have launched two election campaigns, but he has also already worked in Holyrood – as an intern in Humza Yousaf’s office.

The Scottish Green candidate was matched as an intern to the SNP’s Yousaf through the John Smith Centre at the University of Glasgow, and worked in his office while he held the position of Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and later First Minister. 

“I really enjoyed my time with Humza, I really get on with him, I got on with the team really well and I’m really grateful that I had that opportunity to work with him. 

“It was just so by chance that I was put with Humza – I could have been put with Ross Greer, Jackie Bailie…there are MSPs from all across the chamber who take part in this internship,” Eadie said of his work with the First Minister.

In the days leading up to fielding such a young candidate today, age became an issue for which the Scottish Greens received criticism, after Harvie said in an interview with Scotland on Sunday that 65-year-old MSP Fergus Ewing of the SNP was of a generation that had not “come to terms with the reality of what the climate emergency requires of us all collectively,” as part of an ongoing spat between the two politicians.

Challenged on this in Rutherglen today, Harvie said: “In the actual interview I wasn’t talking about a whole generation, I was talking about a cohort of SNP policy makers behind the whole ‘it’s scotland’s oil’ mantra of previous decades.”

The party’s co-leader continued: “I was brought up by a Green activist during the 70s, 80s, 90s when Greens were already ringing the alarm bells. That same woman, my mum, in her early 80s, gave the closing speech at our party conference this year – it’s very clear that the Greens are a movement that has spanned generations and values the contributions that older generations of green activists have made and continue to make to this day.”

Scottish Greens candidate @cami_eadie responds to the idea that the party running could split the pro-independence vote and allow Scottish Labour to win the seat. @heraldscotland 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/SdRLrSI8eF

— Kim Mannion (@MannionKim) August 22, 2023

Eadie hopes his stance on climate will set him apart from other pro-independence party candidates. His standing has attracted criticism that it could split the pro-independence vote in a close race between Scottish Labour and the SNP, thus letting the unionist party win.

“I’m standing on the Green ticket to put climate first. A vote for me will send a message to the establishment party in Westminster that they need to act now on climate, there’s no time left to sit on their hands,” said Eadie.