In the run up to the 2015 general election, there was a lot of talk in Westminster about the demise of two-party hegemony. We were coming to the end of five years of coalition government and the thinking was that neither the Tories nor Labour could get a majority, possibly ever again. This theory has since been crushed as First Past the Post works its magic. But there is one exception to this: the SNP. From having only six MPs in parliament when Nick Clegg was deputy prime minister, they ended up with 56 after 2015, and though they dipped in 2017, they went back up to 48 seats in the House of Commons in December – their dominance of Scottish politics looks destined to continue.
The reason the SNP have managed this contains a lessons for all political parties: you can only be pure about one thing at a time, if you want to win.
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