June 11, 2023 - 6:15pm
The arrest of Nicola Sturgeon in connection with the ongoing police investigation into £600,000 in missing donations to the Scottish National Party ought not to be surprising. The former first minister has since been released without charge, but it marks a sorry development in the SNP’s apparently never-ending sleaze saga.
In April, Police Scotland erected an evidence tent in front of the former first minister’s house and started digging in her garden. Peter Murrell, her husband and chief executive of the SNP for more than two decades, was arrested and held for questioning for almost 12 hours.
The events of Sunday afternoon were thus, surely, inevitable. Yet even to the most jaded Nationalist-watcher, it’s still a shocking moment.
Perhaps it’s just because Sturgeon flew so high for so long. When things were good, the concentration of so much authority in the hands of husband and wife allowed Sturgeon to impose a formidable discipline on the SNP.
Even when they came under pressure during the fallout from the Scottish Government’s woeful mishandling of sexual abuse allegations against Alex Salmond, Sturgeon and Murrell managed to wriggle away from awkward questions about what she knew and when.
Yet it is one thing to maintain an implausible fiction about Chinese walls in the face of a divided panel of grandstanding MSPs, and quite another to do so against a formal investigation from the police, the Crown Office, and the National Crime Agency.
Even if people were minded to believe that a party chief executive wouldn’t keep the leader informed about the state of internal finances, the idea he would not have explained (or even mentioned) a six-figure personal loan to the party was always absurd.
Beyond speculation, we have isolated facts — the loan, the arrests, the earlier resignations from the SNP finance committee, the seizure of a luxury campervan from outside the home of Sturgeon’s mother-in-law — but not the story.
It may well be that there is yet a perfectly (or at least, legally) innocent explanation for why hundreds of thousands of pounds raised for a ring-fenced independence fighting fund is not in the SNP’s accounts. But the political fallout has already started. Humza Yousaf, who touted himself during the leadership election as the heir to Sturgeon, now has to watch as both her credibility and Murrell’s party machine disintegrate beneath him.
Meanwhile followers of Kate Forbes, whom Yousaf defeated narrowly, can only grow angrier that had this occurred during the campaign, she would almost certainly have prevailed.
The scandal inevitably means that Sturgeon herself will emerge a diminished figure. This matters because she remains a politician of rare ability, and in the event of a second referendum might otherwise have been a major asset to the separatist cause.
Unionists can’t rest on their laurels, of course: the hard work of winning round those Scots whose hearts swung behind independence in 2014 needs still to be done. But the SNP’s extraordinary rise was built on the talents and energies of two people: Salmond and Sturgeon. Their successive topplings cannot help but make that work a little easier.
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SubscribeArrested? Well, who’d have thought?
Actually quite a number of posters here and elsewhere. It only seems to have come as a surprise to certain journalists – who are the very people who are supposed to have access, and therefore greater insight.
I wrote several months ago that “Krankie will quit before the sh** hits the fan-dabbie-dozie”, it had been widely reported that the SNP’s war-chest was being bilked of donated money for purposes that were not as advertised. Yet the Guardian, BBC and much of the media were still of the opinion that we, the UK, would be much better off if we could have a leader like St Nicola, that paragon of rectitude and probity.
The media fawning on la Sturgeon, Jacinda, Trudeau, and most particularly Obama is indicative of that well-established tendency among leftist admirers to extol the virtues of their preferred leaders for what they represent, rather than what they actually did, or how the world benefitted from their time in office.
Sturgeon, like Trudeau & Ardern, was lauded for taking up activist causes and being seen to be on the side of good – rather than actually doing any good. Similarly, an objective review of Merkel’s time in office would make for pretty unflattering reading, as would Obama’s – yet all the aforementioned are held up as statesmen of our time, having done remarkably little to earn such accolades.
The kind of journalism you mention is what is known as access journalism. Unfortunately, pretty much all mainstream journalists engage in it these days.
Access journalism is a form of quid-pro-quo news reporting where journalists promise to write favorably on certain people and topics in order gain greater access to an elite inner circle or luxury good products. As a result, journalists become a fawning courtier class pandering to, rather than investigating, those in power.
Spot on!
The kind of journalism you mention is what is known as access journalism. Unfortunately, pretty much all mainstream journalists engage in it these days.
Access journalism is a form of quid-pro-quo news reporting where journalists promise to write favorably on certain people and topics in order gain greater access to an elite inner circle or luxury good products. As a result, journalists become a fawning courtier class pandering to, rather than investigating, those in power.
Spot on!
Arrested? Well, who’d have thought?
Actually quite a number of posters here and elsewhere. It only seems to have come as a surprise to certain journalists – who are the very people who are supposed to have access, and therefore greater insight.
I wrote several months ago that “Krankie will quit before the sh** hits the fan-dabbie-dozie”, it had been widely reported that the SNP’s war-chest was being bilked of donated money for purposes that were not as advertised. Yet the Guardian, BBC and much of the media were still of the opinion that we, the UK, would be much better off if we could have a leader like St Nicola, that paragon of rectitude and probity.
The media fawning on la Sturgeon, Jacinda, Trudeau, and most particularly Obama is indicative of that well-established tendency among leftist admirers to extol the virtues of their preferred leaders for what they represent, rather than what they actually did, or how the world benefitted from their time in office.
Sturgeon, like Trudeau & Ardern, was lauded for taking up activist causes and being seen to be on the side of good – rather than actually doing any good. Similarly, an objective review of Merkel’s time in office would make for pretty unflattering reading, as would Obama’s – yet all the aforementioned are held up as statesmen of our time, having done remarkably little to earn such accolades.
It would be good if someone would compile a list, a small list, of all the media commentators and slebs that didn’t prostrate themselves at the altar of this appalling individual’s ego during her non-stop series of revolting, hypocritical, egotistical diatribes-as-politics during Covid.
An old style stamp should suffice.
An old style stamp should suffice.
It would be good if someone would compile a list, a small list, of all the media commentators and slebs that didn’t prostrate themselves at the altar of this appalling individual’s ego during her non-stop series of revolting, hypocritical, egotistical diatribes-as-politics during Covid.
This article is written as though this case is over. Not charged yet. At some point I assume the police must reveal what it is they are actually investigating here.
Regardless, the damage to the SNP is permanent and irrecoverable. It simply doesn’t pass the “newspaper test” (how would you feel if this story about you appeared in a newspaper ?).
Future historians will be baffled that Boris Johnson was forced out over something far less serious than this, while Nicola Sturgeon got such an easy ride from the media.
Sturgeon was regularly eviscerated in the English pro-Union media. In 2017, the Daily Telegraph called for her to be beheaded. I guess when you’re pro-Union, there’s a baseline level of abuse that is considered normal.
Could it be that they used the money for election expenditure and not only overspent their allowance but presented an erroneous account to the auditor after the-election?. That is not only an offence but could call into question the legitimacy of the present Scottish government.
Sturgeon was regularly eviscerated in the English pro-Union media. In 2017, the Daily Telegraph called for her to be beheaded. I guess when you’re pro-Union, there’s a baseline level of abuse that is considered normal.
Could it be that they used the money for election expenditure and not only overspent their allowance but presented an erroneous account to the auditor after the-election?. That is not only an offence but could call into question the legitimacy of the present Scottish government.
This article is written as though this case is over. Not charged yet. At some point I assume the police must reveal what it is they are actually investigating here.
Regardless, the damage to the SNP is permanent and irrecoverable. It simply doesn’t pass the “newspaper test” (how would you feel if this story about you appeared in a newspaper ?).
Future historians will be baffled that Boris Johnson was forced out over something far less serious than this, while Nicola Sturgeon got such an easy ride from the media.
“Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has passed her driving theory test with full marks in one section,” was the “independent” “news” in Scotland 22 hours ago. It is not the news there now. Again I say that it is time for one of Alba’s two MPs to name the conspirators against Alex Salmond under parliamentary privilege. And late next year, the United Kingdom is going to elect a hung Parliament. The balance of power is up for grabs, since it will certainly not now be held by the SNP.
“Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has passed her driving theory test with full marks in one section,” was the “independent” “news” in Scotland 22 hours ago. It is not the news there now. Again I say that it is time for one of Alba’s two MPs to name the conspirators against Alex Salmond under parliamentary privilege. And late next year, the United Kingdom is going to elect a hung Parliament. The balance of power is up for grabs, since it will certainly not now be held by the SNP.
If Nicola Sturgeon goes to jail over this, I sincerely hope she is not housed in a prison with male offenders, as that poses an unacceptable risk to women. I’m sure the former first minister will agree.
So, so true !
So, so true !
If Nicola Sturgeon goes to jail over this, I sincerely hope she is not housed in a prison with male offenders, as that poses an unacceptable risk to women. I’m sure the former first minister will agree.
What really got me was that they spent the loot on a mobile bluddy home thingy. George Best once said that he spent half his money on drink, women and gambling – the rest he just wasted.
I’m with George.
The SNP has been busy trying to tax flying (except for COP) out of existence , so I guess she was only putting her, I mean the donors’, money where her mouth is.
The SNP has been busy trying to tax flying (except for COP) out of existence , so I guess she was only putting her, I mean the donors’, money where her mouth is.
What really got me was that they spent the loot on a mobile bluddy home thingy. George Best once said that he spent half his money on drink, women and gambling – the rest he just wasted.
I’m with George.
Disclosure: I was an SNP member back in the 1990’s. Starting back then, it was SNP strategy to out-flank Labour on policies such as race, asylum and rights. The SNP’s motivation was to appeal to those tribunes of the chatterati, namely the Scottish newspaper political columnists. It has been a great success: the SNP has had them eating out of its hand ever since. Those policies were unimportant to ordinary Scots, so the strategy lost hardly any votes.
I suggest that those policies were not “unimportant” to ordinary Scots. They just haven’t realised what the costs and side effects are yet.
I suggest that those policies were not “unimportant” to ordinary Scots. They just haven’t realised what the costs and side effects are yet.
Disclosure: I was an SNP member back in the 1990’s. Starting back then, it was SNP strategy to out-flank Labour on policies such as race, asylum and rights. The SNP’s motivation was to appeal to those tribunes of the chatterati, namely the Scottish newspaper political columnists. It has been a great success: the SNP has had them eating out of its hand ever since. Those policies were unimportant to ordinary Scots, so the strategy lost hardly any votes.
“the Scottish Government’s woeful mishandling of sexual abuse allegations against Alex Salmond”
Craig Murray and others demonstrated that they didn’t “mishandle” these accusations, they orchestrated them.
“the Scottish Government’s woeful mishandling of sexual abuse allegations against Alex Salmond”
Craig Murray and others demonstrated that they didn’t “mishandle” these accusations, they orchestrated them.
Ms Sturgeon is indeed ‘a politician of rare ability’. Everything she touches goes horribly wrong – education, health, drugs, ferries, etc- but people still vote for her.
Salmond was the one with real ability. Despite it all, I wouldn’t count him out yet.
Ms Sturgeon is indeed ‘a politician of rare ability’. Everything she touches goes horribly wrong – education, health, drugs, ferries, etc- but people still vote for her.
Salmond was the one with real ability. Despite it all, I wouldn’t count him out yet.
Wasn’t she part of the rabid left that couldn’t define what a woman is? That alone would have caught up with her in time.
Wasn’t she part of the rabid left that couldn’t define what a woman is? That alone would have caught up with her in time.
These articles attract the knee-jerk readers whose thinking faculties aren’t required.
From the horse’s mouth?
From the horse’s mouth?
These articles attract the knee-jerk readers whose thinking faculties aren’t required.
It is obviously extremely distressing to be arrested. I regret that this was decided to be necessary, when apparently a few hours of conversation removed the need for the arrest.
It is obviously extremely distressing to be arrested. I regret that this was decided to be necessary, when apparently a few hours of conversation removed the need for the arrest.