Iain Macwhirter is correct in his observation that "claims that Scotland is now a one-party state after the General Election were predictable and wrong" (Trouble ahead?, Comment, 28 June).

The concept of a "one-party state" does not apply to a state in which one party appears to be electorally dominant at a given point in time, as indeed Labour in Scotland was for the half-century prior to the 2007 Scottish election leading to the formation of

a minority SNP administration, but only to a state in which no other political party is legally

permitted to exist, far less to contest elections. Twentieth-century examples included Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Spain as well as Stalinist Russia.

It is absurd to detect any similarity between these regimes and the administration of Nicola Sturgeon

or indeed of her predecessor, Alex Salmond.

Secondly the recent UK election in which the SNP sensationally won 56 out of 59 Scottish seats did not actually lead to the SNP gaining any more power than it already had at Holyrood.

Despite some pre-election expectations, the result produced a Conservative government with a narrow overall Commons majority which seems determined to ignore the arrival of an unprecedented number of SNP MPs in the hallowed chambers and to continue governing our country as if nothing of any significance had happened and despite the election of only one Scottish Conservative MP.

Finally, it is greatly to the SNP's credit that despite the fact that for the first time in its 80-year history it was an undoubted beneficiary of the discredited "first-past-the-post" electoral system it remains committed both to the more proportionate system already in use for Holyrood elections and to the adoption of a more proportionate system for future Westminster elections.

Ian O Bayne

Glasgow