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.
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