LOL”. That’s how First Minister Nicola Sturgeon reacted to a cover of The Spectator featuring a caricature of her, red eyed and surrounded by lightning bolts, with the headline 'Big Sister: Inside Nicola Sturgeon’s one-party state'.

Her full comment, delivered by Twitter, was ‘LOL (as I believe the youngsters say these days!)’ beneath a picture of the right-wing London-based magazine’s latest cover.



Although Sturgeon may have lolled, there were some who took umbrage at the claim that Scotland was a 'one-party state'. Most treated it with ridicule.

SNP MSP Mark McDonald tweeted: “We have opposition politicians in parliament. We can’t even do a one-party state properly. #snpout”

Journalist Ross Mcafferty tweeted: “A one-party state is a state where only one party is allowed. Not where one party is quite successful. Scotland is the latter.”

In a lengthy post, law blogger Andrew Tickell pointed out that, of 1416 elected representatives in “Nicola Sturgeon’s one-party state”, only 547 were SNP.

It looks like the First Minister’s incipient tyranny needs serious work,” Tickell wrote. “SNP candidates control a mere 38.6 per cent of seats in Holyrood, in Scotland’s Westminster delegation, and in town halls and local authority offices across the country. If this is authoritarianism, it is singularly inept authoritarianism.”

Twitter star Angry Salmond tweeted: “I mainly dislike the term ‘one-party state’ because I’m scared it will hurt the Green Party’s feelings. I couldn’t care less about Labour.” STV journalist Stephen Daisley tweeted Spectator editor Fraser Nelson to say he’d have to carry around his copy of the magazine hidden inside The National.

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