The co-leader of the Scottish Greens has said he will be ‘absolutely crushed’ if he is unable to force the SNP to adopt a raft of far left policies.

Ross Greer said his MSPs were certain to wield ‘significant influence’ and were intent on using the balance of power to enact a raft of socialist schemes.

He said: ‘We will take whatever opportunity we can get to deliver those policies.’

His manifesto included a raft of new taxes, including a 1 per cent tax on home values.

He denied having ‘any particular personal ambition’ to become a minister, but refused to rule out becoming one by the summer.

The Scottish Tories said a return to the Green tail wagging the SNP dog was ‘the stuff of nightmares’.

With polls suggesting John Swinney will fall short of an SNP majority in a deeply divided parliament, the First Minister will need at least one other party to pass his budgets.

In 2021, Nicola Sturgeon invited the Greens into her minority government, leading to then co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater’s blunder-strewn spell as ministers.

The pact broke down in 2024 when new FM Humza Yousaf unceremoniously fired the pair.

Mr Greer, who helped draw up the Bute House Agreement between the on-off Nationalist allies, told the Mail: ‘If the arithmetic after this election means that the Greens aren’t the swing vote in Parliament, I will be absolutely crushed by that.

‘About 99 polls out of 100 at the moment show that the Greens will be the swing vote, or the Liberal Democrats, but the Greens will certainly occupy a position of significant influence.

‘My priority is getting Green policies delivered.’

Asked if he expected to be a minister by summer, Mr Greer did not rule it out.

He said: ‘I don’t have any particular personal ambition in that regard. I do want the Greens to be in the most influential position that we can be.

‘We’ve always been clear that you get more of your agenda delivered from government than from opposition.

‘We wouldn’t go into government just to help the SNP deliver their own manifesto.

‘The only way that we would go into government is if there was a substantial element of Green policy to that programme.

‘Any offer for us to work with the government, whether that was coalition agreement, cooperation agreement, confidence and supply from outside, of course, we’re going to take that seriously.’

Mr Greer also trashed the Scottish Liberal Democrats as potential SNP allies.

In the STV leaders debate, John Swinney tellingly thanked LibDem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton ‘warmly’ for backing the last two SNP budgets and asked if he would work ‘constructively’ on others featuring ‘Liberal Democrat priorities’.

Mr Cole-Hamilton in return thanked Mr Swinney for ‘the decency of that question’.

Mr Greer said he wouldn’t criticise the LibDems for working constructively with others but added: ‘The Lib Dems are certainly a much cheaper date than the Greens. But they’re not reliable.

‘On some issues, they take the classic Unionist position of, “Just because it’s a pro-independence government we’re going to oppose them”.

‘With the Greens, everybody knows where we stand.’

A Scottish Conservative spokesman said: ‘This is the stuff of nightmares.

‘Scots will remember the disastrous policies the Greens inflicted on them the last time Ross Greer and his colleagues were the tail wagging the SNP dog.

‘John Swinney should be keeping these extremists as far away from power as possible but he spent the whole campaign refusing to rule out another grubby deal with them, because they slavishly back his plans for another independence referendum above everything else.’

The Greens also predicted they would claim the biggest scalp of the election by toppling Constitution Secretary Angus Robertson in the redrawn Edinburgh Central seat.

Boundary changes have added large areas popular with students and renters, who the Greens have targeted, with Mr Robertson’s nominal majority now barely 4,000 votes.

Green candidate Lorna Slater said she was ahead on the eve of polling, with Labour’s James Dalgleish second, and Mr Robertson third.

She said: ‘We've thrown the kitchen sink at this. The Green team is just so excited about this, whereas maybe there's a lack of energy on the SNP side.’

SNP and Labour sources both said their party was ahead,

On Wednesday, Mr Swinney insisted his cabinet colleague would win, giving a curt ‘Yes’ when asked if Mr Robertson would remain an MSP.

But at the 2017 general election, Nicola Sturgeon said she was ‘absolutely not’ worried about Mr Robertson, then deputy SNP leader and Westminster leader, losing his Moray seat.

A few days later, his 9,065 vote majority vanished and Tory Douglas Ross won by 4,159 votes.