THE Scottish Greens say they will fight future General Elections – despite losing their deposit in every seat they contested.

The party fielded a total of 22 candidates across Scotland, none of whom secured enough of the vote to retain their £500 deposit.

The three-figure payment is intended to discourage challengers who have little chance of winning and is not given back to those who poll at less than 5% in each area.

Most of the Green candidates secured around 2% of public support, dropping to 1.7% in three areas – Airdrie and Shotts, Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, and Dunfermline and West Fife.

At 4.3%, Claire Miller in Edinburgh East (pictured) was their best performing candidate.

Compared to 2017, the party’s overall vote share rose by 0.8% – but only three candidates were fielded in the previous contest.

On Thursday night, Scottish Greens co-convenor Patrick Harvie told The National they were “under no illusions” about the importance of tactical voting in this snap election, during which the SNP made blocking Boris a key campaign pledge.

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He said Johnson and his “brand of nasty, divisive and frankly racist populism” is a “severe threat to everybody”.

And Glasgow North candidate Cass Macgregor said the Tory win left her “gutted” for the public.

Yesterday a spokesperson said the party was “upbeat”, despite the results, telling The National it had succeeded in making the climate emergency an election issue and pressing other parties on their records.

The spokesperson said: “The primary objective for the Scottish Greens at this election was to hold the other parties to account by demanding climate action.

“We stood against incumbents from all parties to keep the climate crisis on the agenda, and we succeeded, despite being excluded from TV debates by broadcasters who followed Boris Johnson’s framing of the election.

“We pushed all the other parties at hustings and in the media to lay out plans for tackling the climate emergency.

“Notably, when we were excluded from those debates, the crisis didn’t come up.”

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The next scheduled electoral contest is the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, when the Greens will hope to build on the six MSPs they secured last time in their largest ever Holyrood win.

However, the party did not share in the poll bounce experienced by the Green Party of England and Wales and European green parties at the European Parliament elections earlier this year, when their vote share went up just 0.14%.

A spokesperson said: “We hope to fight more seats in future General Elections to build on this success. Indeed, we received many messages of support from people in constituencies we were not standing in, urging us to stand next time.

“Our candidates are understandably proud that in an election characterised by tactical voting we increased our vote in some areas and stood for the first time in others. The campaign provided an opportunity for excellent ground work ahead of the next Holyrood elections, reaching new voters and building our base. Many who voted tactically in this broken, first-past-the-post election told us they will go Green in 2021.

“We would like to have convinced more this time, but our strategic objective to keep climate on the agenda and put other parties on the back foot in Scotland succeeded. We even saw an SNP and a Labour candidate put out leaflets in our party colours on their way to being elected.

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“We will continue to hold the new MPs feet to the fire on this.”