Nicola Sturgeon would be “welcome” to join the Scottish Greens after praising the party and criticising the SNP’s direction under John Swinney.
The former first minister said in an updated foreword to her memoirs that the Greens “came closest to injecting a sense of hope” during this year’s Holyrood election campaign.
Scottish Greens co-leader Gillian Mackay told The National: “Nicola has not joined the Scottish Greens and, as welcome as she would be, we do not expect her to.”
Sturgeon criticised Swinney’s “lack of vision or big-picture thinking” and suggested the SNP was “lucky” the Greens did not contest more constituencies at May’s election.
Her intervention has drawn criticism from former government colleagues, with Education Secretary Mairi McAllan dismissing her comments as “nonsense”, while Health Secretary Angela Constance described Swinney as Scotland’s “best first minister yet”.