The imprisonment of former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell for embezzling more than £400,000 brings to the end an especially sordid chapter in the history of Scotland’s largest political party.
Murrell – the estranged husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon – was led from the dock at the High Court in Edinburgh on Tuesday morning to begin a five-and-a-half-year sentence after admitting, last month, to rinsing the SNP’s accounts to splash out on enough luxury goods to start a department store. Once half of the most powerful couple in Scotland, Murrell is now just another inmate in our overcrowded prison estate, and all that tat he bought will be sold to pay back his party. But while the hearing ends Murrell’s part in this bizarre story, the drama continues.
Once half of the most powerful couple in Scotland, Murrell is now just another inmate in our overcrowded prison estate, and all that tat he bought will be sold to pay back his party
Within SNP circles, the feeling that First Minister John Swinney might also pay a price for this scandal grows stronger by the day.
Just six weeks after Swinney led the nationalists to their fifth successive election victory, speculation is rife that Stephen Flynn – the party’s former Westminster leader who made the move to Holyrood last month – is preparing a leadership challenge. The First Minister’s weirdly inept handling of the Murrell scandal may be to blame for this state of affairs.
From the moment his former friend pleaded guilty, last month, Swinney has insisted that this is a private matter for the SNP. He has rejected calls – from unionists and nationalists – for an inquiry into how Murrell could have got away with his crimes for 12 years, insisting that all lessons necessary lessons have been learned.
Swinney’s position is that the only victims here were SNP members (as if that, somehow, lessens the seriousness of Murrell’s crimes) and that no public money was involved.
Given the fact that, even as Murrell was spending his party’s cash like a coked-up lottery winner on a Harrods trolley dash, Swinney appeared on television to insist that there was no problem with the SNP’s finances, he can’t be surprised this line isn’t holding.
A smarter – or even vaguely competent – political leader would have done everything in his power to get ahead of this scandal. He would have pre-empted inevitable opposition demands for an inquiry and appointed an ‘independent’ chair. Instead, an increasing tetchy Swinney has spent the past month snarling at opponents that he won the election and they should suck it up.
Supporters of the First Minister make the not unreasonable point that he has the numbers on his side. The SNP won 58 of Holyrood’s 129 seats last month and, with the support of an entirely compliant 15-strong Green group, Swinney could comfortably see off a confidence vote.
But that does not mean he retains the confidence of colleagues. One source within the Scottish parliament’s SNP groups says, ‘Keir Starmer won a landslide two years ago and now he’s out on his arse. People can say well, we have the numbers, but the way to lose the numbers is to think you’re untouchable because you have the fucking numbers… John missed his chance to take control of the Murrell stuff weeks ago and now he’s bogged down in it. Every time he says there’s nothing to see, here, he looks shady and, you know, we’re talking about a guy whose one actual plus was always his reputation for being a straight dealer.’
Perhaps the First Minister’s calculation is correct and he can, somehow, disentangle himself from this mess. But there may be more coming down the line. Shortly after Peter Murrell was sentenced, the man who first reported concerns about the SNP’s finances to Police Scotland, Sean Clerkin, approached the media, assembled outside the High Court.
‘There is,’ he intoned, ‘a lot more to come out.’
Whether John Swinney will survive the latest chapter in the SNP story is not yet clear.
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