Patrick Harvie didn’t say anything when he left Bute House on Thursday morning, face like fizz, Edinburgh sun lighting up his rainbow lanyard. But he and Lorna Slater certainly had plenty to say later on. According to the co-leaders of the Scottish Greens, by ending the Bute House Agreement, the SNP was selling out future generations to appease reactionary forces. Quite the little tantrum it was.

But don’t be fooled. The Greens were undoubtedly angry – I know it because I saw their furious faces in Holyrood on Thursday and it fair cheered me up I must say – but a high level of anger does not necessarily indicate a high level of fact. The Greens’ press statement was full of words like cowardice, betrayal and appeasement, and warned of the dark forces that were really at work in Humza Yousaf’s decision, by which of course they meant the darkest and most terrible force of all: people who aren’t left-wing.

Mr Harvie, appearing on Radio 4 a few hours after being sacked, explained a little more of what he meant. There’s a right-wing faction in the SNP, he said, who’ve been throwing their weight around and the First Minister has decided to capitulate to it. The consequence, said Mr Harvie, was that the progressive values promoted by the Greens will be dumped or watered down in the coming months.

But let’s put Mr Harvie’s remarks to a stress test. As former SNP minister and Herald columnist Ivan McKee later pointed out, Patrick Harvie has a habit of calling everyone who doesn’t agree with him a right-winger and it’s probably because the Scottish Greens can’t think of anything worse than being (yikes!) conservative or (double yikes!) Conservative. It is the ultimate insult; it is the mic-drop smear.

But Mr Harvie should try to get a term like “right-wing” correct, particularly if he’s going to throw it around like an insult. When challenged about it on the radio, he attempted to clarify his position by saying that a lot of the people who have been rebelling within the SNP are “socially conservative” but socially conservative doesn’t necessarily mean right wing; I know plenty of lefties who are socially quite conservative and plenty of righties who are socially extremely liberal. That’s point number one.

Point number two is that right-wing is a thoroughly (and probably wilfully) inaccurate description of many of those who have been most critical of the Greens. The truth is a lot of the fiercest criticism of the party and its influence on policy has come from gender critical feminists on the trans issue. Make no mistake: these are the people Mr Harvie is referring to when says “socially conservative” or “right wing”.

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But again: he couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve spoken to many people on the gender critical side and they cut across left and right. Yes, Tories are generally more likely to be gender critical but most of the gender critical activists I’ve met are old-school left-wing women in their 40s and 50s, sometimes Labour party members, sometimes trade unionists, and certainly not right-wing or conservative, unless they hide it very well.

A good example on the gender-critical side would be the SNP MP Joanna Cherry, who made a speech in the Commons this week laying out her views – basically her position that lesbianism is based on attraction to the same sex, not the same gender. It was a firm, measured and well-argued speech but it’s the sort of opinion that will have her labelled by the Greens as part of the reactionary, right-wing forces who’ve forced the SNP to “sell out future generations” even though it’s obviously ludicrous. Joanna Cherry isn’t right-wing or reactionary and if she is, what on earth does that make me?

Ms Cherry also made it clear what she thought about the Greens’ statement about reactionary forces: their “childish undignified silly rant”, she said, should put an end to any doubts over exiting the Bute House Agreement. The point is that not only is this how many within the SNP (MPs, MSPs, members, voters) now think about the Greens, it looks like it’s finally got through to the top of the party. The Greens are associated with policies on trans rights that have become increasingly poisonous and unpopular, and so the Greens have to go; end of agreement.

Obviously, we could argue about the sort of trick Mr Yousaf is trying to pull here – the SNP were just as enthusiastic about the government’s trans policies as the Greens were – but the fact the First Minister has ended the agreement does at least suggest that he’s seen the Greens’ behaviour for what it really is. Particularly horrifying was Patrick Harvie’s reaction to the Cass review on gender services; he said that there were far too many criticisms of it for him to accept it as a valid scientific document, which looks to me like the same kind of anti-factual denialism that labels everyone who disagrees with you as right-wing.

The problem now is we’re all caught up in the drama: there’s a no confidence vote this week and the Greens have said they’ll vote against (we’ll see). What might help – and it’s just a thought – would be an indication from the First Minister that he’s learned some real lessons from the alliance with the Greens. Is the Cass review a valid scientific document? Are gender critical feminists right-wing? What does he think about Patrick Harvie now? And how important is it, First Minister, that politicians try their best to be accurate and measured and fair?