Talk:Deputy First Minister of Scotland

Possible title change

Would it be alright to move to Deputy First Minister (Scotland)? GoodDay (talk) 20:09, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Category:Deputy Prime Ministers

My edit was reverted with the folowing comment, "not by any stretch of the imagination a deputy prime minister". I disagree. The office is one of deputy to the First Minister which is just a synonym for Prime Minister; how is that not member of the category Category:Deputy prime ministers? @Ebonelm: Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:08, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

'First minister' is not a synonym for prime minister. It was occasionally used in that manner before the introduction of the current devolution settlement, mainly for the sake of a little rhetorical variation, but nowadays this is never done as 'first minister' has become a term in its own right, with its own specific meaning. A 'first minister' is a head of government but only of a sub-national and constitutionally non-sovereign entity, they are not a 'prime minister' which is a term that refers to the head of government of a sovereign state. Ergo a 'deputy first minister' is not a 'deputy prime minister'. Ebonelm (talk) 12:55, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

What about Category:Deputy prime ministers of Chechnya, a non-sovereign entity? Or Category:Deputy Prime Ministers of the Cook Islands? And who says is has to be a sovereign state only? That sounds like an OR interpretation to me. The main article does not say so. In fact it specifically mentions the analogous situation that I describe above: "The states of Australia and provinces of Canada each have the analogous office of deputy premier. In the devolved administrations of the United Kingdom, an analogous position is that of the deputy first minister but the position in Northern Ireland has the same powers as the First Minister.". Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:59, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

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A couple of issues

There are a couple of points which I think are possibly misleading. Firstly the statement "When the government is formed by a coalition, the Deputy First Minister is usually the leader of the minority partner". Prior to 2021, there had only been one coalition government the Labour-Lib Dem coalition in 1999-2007 in which the leader of the smaller party Jim Wallace, then Nicol Stephen was Deputy First Minister throughout. Since then there was no-coalition until the Greens entered into coalition with the SNP in August 2021 the Deputy First Minister remained the SNP's John Swinney. Thus I think it is a stretch to say that based on one coalition arrangement that "the Deputy First Minister is usually the leader of the minority partner". The second point is Jim Wallace is recorded as acting First Minister 8-27 November 2001, which is correct, but he also held this post in 2000 between the death of Donald Dewar and Henry McLeish - as stated at First Minister of Scotland. I am not actually sure that the acting FM needs to be listed here. Dunarc (talk) 19:49, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

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