Ruth Wishart

Scotland is a self-confident nation – not a one-party state

Politics, as we know, makes the strangest of bedfellows. Step forward Tam Dalyell, Laird of The Binns and erstwhile Father of the House, and the editor of this estimable organ. In the space of this last week I have heard/read both sources refer to Scotland having a one-party state in the shape of the Scottish National Party; the former at Glasgow’s Aye Write! Book Festival and the latter in an editorial on Donald Trump. I would have expected better from both!

At the last count there were certainly a handful of countries to whom that description could properly be applied. North Korea and the People’s Republic of China spring to mind. Even for someone with my fertile imagination, I find it difficult to think of Nicola Sturgeon as a supreme leader in the mould of Kim Jong Un.

More pertinently, a one party state, by definition, is a legislature in which the voters have a single choice on the ballot paper. Scotland, in common with its neighbours in the UK, currently features eight contenders for ruling party in the Holyrood parliament:  SNP, Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Greens, Ukip and the newest kid on the block, RISE, whose slate supports republicanism, independence, socialism and the environment.

No storm troopers attended RISE’s inaugural conference, and no stewards were harmed in the process of the recent Tory and Labour gatherings. The fact that Scotland’s eight police forces were merged into the singular Police Scotland, does not really qualify the nation for the title police state.

Yet there is a serious point to be made here. The phrase ‘one party state’ has been bandied about at will ever since the SNP took 95 per cent of the seats at the last UK general election. Voters returned just one Lib Dem, one Labour, and one Conservative MP out of 59 constituencies.

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