The opposition wins every seat in the Barbados Parliament

THE tally looked like a parody of a rigged election. On May 24th the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) won three-quarters of the vote for the country’s House of Assembly—and every one of the chamber’s 30 seats. Yet no one alleged fraud when the results came out. Instead, the new prime minister, Mia Mottley, faced an unprecedented policy dilemma: how the opposition’s constitutional duties can be performed if there is no opposition in Parliament.

When voters rebuke a sitting government with so lopsided a vote, it is usually amid a dire national crisis. In Barbados, however, the electorate simply seemed to have tired of a mucky status quo—though an election-eve endorsement on Instagram from Rihanna, a pop singer and the world’s best-known Barbadian, may well have put extra wind in Ms Mottley’s sails.