Why John Swinney would put party first by quitting over Peter Murrell scandal – Paul Wilson
First Minister could follow example of Nicola Sturgeon and resign for the good of the SNP
‘Move along, there’s nothing to see here.’ The SNP reflex towards deflection, obfuscation and denial served the party well during the good times but is now starting to wear thin.
Nicola Sturgeon stunned the political world in February 2023 by announcing her resignation as party leader and First Minister, with no heir apparent. After eight years in the top job, she wanted to get in touch with the real Nicola, she explained, and give someone else a go at heaving independence over the line.
Yes, her waning political credibility had been dealt a heavy blow the previous month by the gender self-identification row over where to jail double rapist Adam Graham, or Isla Bryson as he preferred to be known post-conviction. It would have been far less surprising if Sturgeon had quit at this point. Instead, she said she had “plenty left in the tank”.
Sturgeon’s change of mind
Something prompted her to change her mind between the Adam Graham scandal of January 2023 and her resignation announcement on 15 February.
As she begins a new life in London, Sturgeon gave an interview on Sunday to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg in the wake of her estranged husband Peter Murrell’s guilty plea to charges of embezzlement last week. She said: “Until probably early 2023, there was no suggestion that what was being looked into in terms of the finances was potential embezzlement.”
It is entirely plausible she had a good idea what was to come and that it would be far better for her and the party to appear to resign on her own terms than be forced from office when chickens started coming home to roost.
The following month, Murrell quit as SNP chief executive after a secrecy row over party membership figures. Then, on 5 April, he was arrested as a blue police tent was erected outside the couple’s South Lanarkshire home and the property was searched. A luxury motorhome costing £124,550 was seized from the driveway of Murrell’s mother’s home in Fife. Sturgeon was arrested in June and released without charge.
A different kind of scandal
When Murrell’s day in court finally arrived last week, some suggested the damage to the SNP would be less than feared. After all, John Swinney had turned the party’s fortunes around following the brief and calamitous interregnum of Humza Yousaf. In an election just three weeks earlier, the SNP had yet again emerged as by far the biggest party at Holyrood.
But this scandal is of a different order of magnitude from, for example, what former Health Secretary Michael Matheson did or did not watch on his parliamentary iPad while on holiday in Morocco.
Murrell faces a lengthy prison term for stealing more than £400,000 from SNP funds to buy a dizzying assortment of motor vehicles, household goods and expensive nick-nacks between 2010 and 2022. There is plenty to see here.
Among the high-end coffee machines, the £2,618 crystal salt and pepper grinders, the £110 pencil sharpener, the £3,070 robot lawnmower, the mountain of loo roll bought at the start of lockdown as Sturgeon was ordering Scots not to stockpile, and all the rest, was a book titled “How We Get The Wrong Politicians”, by journalist Isabel Hardman. Perhaps Murrell was as baffled as the rest of us are now at how he managed to get away with it for so long.
Murrell’s magpies
Giving evidence by video call from his home to Holyrood’s Alex Salmond inquiry in 2021, Murrell appeared distracted. Labour’s Jackie Baillie asked why he kept looking to the left of the camera. “Is there anybody in the room with you?” she inquired. “There’s a magpie,” Murrell explained. “In fact, there’s two of them.”
Of all the birds to be drawn to his many ill-gotten feeders – perhaps it was “The Nutter”, bought for £32 on Amazon in 2015 – it had to be the species renowned for its insatiable appetite for hoarding shiny trinkets. Was he trying to tell us something?
The Aladdin’s Cave that was the Murrell/Sturgeon household was paid for by SNP members who, in good faith, donated their own hard-earned cash in the belief it would go towards furthering the independence cause.
Sturgeon’s claim to have had no inkling of anything untoward until around the time of her resignation is unconvincing at best. Leaving aside the vehicles and all the luxury tat piling up in their modest home, how did she suppose her husband, on his £79,000 salary, was able to produce more than £100,000 to lend to the party in its hour of need?
And Sturgeon’s attempt, in the Kuenssberg interview, to dismiss as “misogyny” questions over what she knew and when was, frankly, risible.
Swinney’s angry and defensive response, and his rejection of calls for an inquiry, has been equally woeful. The First Minister has been part of a centralised tight-knit cadre in control of the party since the dawn of devolution.
It was Swinney who appointed Murrell SNP chief executive, during his first leadership term in 2001. For the first half of Murrell’s 12-year shopping spree Swinney was Scotland’s Finance Secretary, and for the second he was Deputy First Minister.
“Honest John” could be asked the same sorts of questions as Sturgeon – except instead of “how did you not notice what Murrell was buying?”, it would be “how did you not notice the absence of what Murrell was pretending to buy?”
Murrell is due to be sentenced on 23 June, but this scandal will run and run. Swinney will continue to face questions about the activities of his incarcerated childhood friend. This will do the SNP and the independence cause no favours.
The fish rots from the head down. If the head was replaced by one far less tainted by association – Stephen Flynn, perhaps, or Mairi McAllan or Jenny Gilruth from the continuity Sturgeon wing – the damage might be contained before it goes too deep.
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