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.
