What would you say if your spouse bought a luxury campervan? I know what I would say – something along the lines of: ‘Get that thing away from me. I refuse to spend wet weekends campervanning around the Highlands, and I don’t care whether the bathroom facilities are “luxury” or not.’ In other words, any spouse of mine would get a tongue-lashing. But then I have a spiritual aversion to campervans, having spent many a childhood summer stuck behind them on single-track roads in the Highlands, watching their foul residents bespoil many of Scotland’s best beaches.
We cannot know what Nicola Sturgeon’s reaction was to this luxury monstrosity. She would have us believe that when Peter Murrell took receipt of his top-of-the-range campervan she had nothing to say. So we do not know whether she was delighted or horrified by the unexpected gift. Perhaps she said: ‘Oh Peter, it’s just what I’ve always dreamed of: our own luxury motorhome.’ Or maybe she said: ‘I don’t know, Peter, isn’t it a little flashy? What will the neighbours think?’
Did she really not notice when her kitchen counter became a traffic-jam of high-end coffee-makers?
The reason we do not know is because while the former first minister of Scotland said she would cooperate fully with all police inquiries into her husband’s embezzlement of SNP funds, she did no such thing. In fact, she sat through hours of police interviews only replying, ‘No comment’ – not what most of us have in mind when the words ‘fully cooperate with the police’ come up.
This week, Sturgeon’s now conveniently estranged husband pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 of SNP finances. At present we are asked to believe that she simply didn’t notice the new Jaguar and other new automobiles piling up in front of their home.
Since Sturgeon is strangely silent on this, we will have to fill in the blanks in her narrative arc. Happily, we are in a position to do so, because the criminal charges against Murrell reveal some rather touching insights into his household tastes.
I suppose Sturgeon may not have noticed the many luxury umbrellas her husband chose to acquire, in one of the stranger demonstrations of kleptomania. But the Scottish weather being what it is, I suppose there is some justification for this particular hobby. Otherwise the objects of his desire constitute a rather mixed shopping bag.
There are expenses that suggest the first embezzler had discerning taste. For instance, he spent significant funds raised by SNP members at Fortnum & Mason, Smythson, Ettinger, Church’s shoes, various luxury watch shops and Lalique. At the other end of the spending scale, he also splashed his unearned cash at Homebase and a firm called Alex McDougall – which, I learn, sells garden machinery, including lawnmowers.
It is not for me to say whether I would notice the odd lawnmower appearing in the garden shed. I would hope that I wouldn’t. But all the luxury watches? Surely those are harder to ignore?
Then there are what we might call the borderline cases. I would like to think I would notice if a high-end coffee machine suddenly appeared in my kitchen, especially if it was a device costing a royal £3,231.90. Perhaps Murrell presented it as some kind of reward for the couple’s toiling in the vineyard of sectarian politics. But what about when the coffee machines started arriving thick and fast? Because Murrell also seems to have suffered some form of kleptomania when it came to top-of-the-range coffee machines, ordering multiple expensive models. This is when my hound-like nose starts to smell something distinctly off. Did Sturgeon really not notice when the kitchen counter of her Glasgow red-brick became a traffic-jam of high-end coffee-makers and grinders? Did she not mind this expensive clutter in her kitchen? Or was she too laser-focused on the prospect of yet another referendum on Scottish independence to notice?
As it happens, the funds that Murrell has admitted to looting while he was chief executive of the SNP were donations intended to be ring-fenced for another referendum on Scottish independence. Senior members say that between them, as party leader and chief executive, Sturgeon and Murrell shut down any and all concerns about the misappropriation of this money. One former MP for the SNP said this week that anyone who raised questions about where the funds were going ‘were treated as traitors to the party’. But, even as Sturgeon used a Lalique salt grinder to season her morning porridge, perhaps she had no more idea than anyone else over where the cash had been going.
Many people will be torn on this whole issue. On the one hand, embezzlement is clearly criminal and wrong. On the other hand, I would rather that Montblanc benefited from the donations of Scottish nationalists than that our nation be put through yet another round of self-righteous grandstanding. I am especially pleased for Fortnum & Mason, which, it has always seemed to me, deserves our support.
Of course there is the perennial question of how the SNP got away with such crookedness, such purging of dissidents, such lack of oversight and of cooperation with the police, and more. And I can’t help thinking that if this had been any other political party there might have been more comment and consequences. But then Scottish nationalists, like their Irish and Welsh counterparts, always speak as though it is widely agreed that they are morally superior to the rest of us.
As the new Scottish parliament settles into its latest pointless and costly session, this whole business once again spurs my desire to pull down the whole ghastly, unnecessary building and salt the ground over. Perhaps the Lalique salt grinder could be used for this urgent ceremony.
Comments