The party co-leader said she was building turbines in Germany during the pandemic when she came third on the regional list and did not expect to be voted out before the 2021 election.
But when former MP Andy Wightman (below) dramatically resigned from the Greens in December 2020, Slater said she received a phone call breaking the news and telling her she would likely be sitting at Holyrood the following year.
In an exclusive interview with Lesley Riddoch, Slater was asked what his biggest political mistake was.
She said: “I don’t think I realized I was in an eligible position.
“If you remember in the dark and the distance, Lesley, my party selected me to be third on the Lothian list, so I understood that I was ineligible because of course at the time we had two Lothian MSPs.
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“During the pandemic I went to Germany and there I was working on the construction of turbines. I got a call from Ross Greer on December 12, 2020 saying one of our MSPs was gone, you’re in.
“I had to go back and prepare to be in the national debate and be elected in a very short period of time, when if I had known I was going to be elected perhaps I would have spent more time during the pandemic preparing and learning how Parliament works instead to build turbines.”
She succeeded Wightman as Lothian MSP after he resigned from the party in 2020 over its stance on transgender and women’s rights.
Following a vote on the Coroners Medical Services Bill, which was successfully amended by Labor to allow victims of sexual assault to request an examiner of a particular sex rather than one gender, Wightman said he had been “willing ” to support the change against green politics. .
In a letter to Slater and co-leader Patrick Harvie (above), she accused the party of “intolerance” and referenced criticism she had received for attending a meeting at Edinburgh University discussing “sex and gender in the context of the rights of transgender people and women.” ”.
Slater was nominally co-leader of the party at the time, but in practice the role was held by MSP Alison Johnstone, now chair.
