THE SNP has been branded "totalitarian" by one of its former deputy leaders.
Jim Sillars claimed the Nationalists were now the "most leadership-controlled party in the UK".
He criticised the party's backbenchers for not speaking out against its leaders, saying there was the "astonishing spectacle" over "many years of no rebellion against leader-ship policy and opinion".
Mr Sillars, SNP MP for Govan from 1988 to 1992, said: "If I did not know better, I'd easily believe the leaders had been schooled in the old communist party, where the elite made the decisions and the rest fell into step automatically, with not a word of dissent. Totalitarian would be a fair description of Scotland's majority party."
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