Peter Murrell may be the convicted criminal, but he is not the only senior SNP figure left looking tainted by the scandal that bears his name. The party’s former chief executive pleaded guilty to stealing more than £400,000 from SNP funds – yet the First Minister, John Swinney, is stubbornly refusing to allow an independent inquiry into the affair.
Swinney has admitted, with some understatement, that “there has not been, in every respect, adequate controls in place” when it came to the governance of SNP accounts. But he insists that “an extensive police investigation that has established serial criminality and a whole range of different actions to cover that up” was sufficient. Various options for an inquiry have been proposed: the Electoral Commission; a KC from outside Scotland; a joint investigation by Westminster and Holyrood committees. Swinney is having none of it.
“John Swinney refuses independent inquiry into SNP funds scandal despite Peter Murrell's theft conviction.”
The First Minister’s slipperiness is transparently self-serving, a desperate attempt to avoid more detail emerging about why attempts by some SNP colleagues to have the accounts opened up to scrutiny were closed down by the Nicola Sturgeon leadership team – of which Swinney was a key part.
Swinney is also playing fast and loose with the facts around the status of £650,000 that was donated to the party during online fundraisers in 2017 and 2019. Promises at the time that the cash would be “ring-fenced” for a second independence referendum were not kept. Much of it was instead spent on the SNP’s election campaigns.
Swinney now insists “that money is part of the resources that are available to the SNP and support its independence objectives, and the SNP is the party of independence, and we just campaigned for Scottish independence at the Scottish Parliamentary elections.” The defence echoes the notorious Bill Clinton line during the Monica Lewinsky affair: “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
Angela Constance, the party chair and Health Secretary, gave a disastrous interview to Radio Scotland on Thursday morning. Asked about the supposedly ringfenced money, she said: “The whole raison d’etre of the Scottish National Party is to further the cause of independence. We do that day in, day out. All of our activities are about furthering the cause of independence.” That last sentence – an admission that literally everything the Scottish Government does is designed to advance the break-up of the UK – is likely to be wheeled out by opposition parties in future.
This is a party that has been in power too long. Even the Murrell scandal cannot humble it.