Jim Sillars: SNP a 'totalitarian' and 'intellectually dumb' party His intervention comes ahead of next month's autumn conference, which will see members vote on a leadership motion to reverse the party long-standing policy of an independent Scotland withdrawing from Nato. Despite a handful of rebels pointing out membership would mean keeping Trident submarines in Scottish waters, the majority appear willing to accept Mr Salmond's assurances the SNP's anti-nuclear credentials would remain intact. Writing in Holyrood magazine, Mr Sillars said: "If I did not know better, I would easily believe the leaders had been schooled in the old Communist Party, where the top, 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. Those willing to be told to shut up seem happy to wait until the leadership issue edicts and statements, and follow whatever line is laid down for them. He concluded: "If loyalty is taken to a point where an MSP, or even worse, a whole group of them, cannot balance loyalty to party with loyalty to principle and the interests of the people, then it becomes dumb loyalty; and that leads inevitably to an intellectually dumb party." He said it is impossible that the entire MSP group agrees with Mr Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney on everything "yet no one has dared tell them to get lost." Backbench MPs at Westminster regularly form groups to examine policy areas such as defence and welfare to help develop party policy. But, despite the research resources available to Nationalist MSPs, Mr Sillars said the evidence is that "no serious work" is being done to answer such vital questions ahead of the independence referendum. An SNP spokesman said next month's Nato membership shows "he SNP is the only party able and willing to have substantial policy debates for the wider party membership."