It is a familiar refrain of divorcing couples, that there were “three of us” in the marriage, said Gavin Madeley in the Daily Mail. Yet in Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon’s, the third party was one they both loved: the SNP was their shared, all-consuming passion. She was the party’s leader; he was its chief executive. And yet we now know that Murrell was betraying everything they held dear – with the party’s credit card.
Over 12 years from 2010, he stole £400,000 from the SNP, and used the money to buy hundreds of items, from DVD box sets to a £4,000 fountain pen and a brand-new Jaguar.
In court this week, Murrell, 61, admitted embezzlement, and was led away in handcuffs. Sturgeon said she’d known nothing of her estranged husband’s actions, and said that she felt “angry, hurt, sad”.
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Disappearing funds
The seeds of his downfall were laid in 2017, said The Scotsman, when Sturgeon asked SNP members to donate to a campaign fund for a second referendum. It raised £667,000, yet in late 2020, an activist spotted that the SNP had only £97,000 on its books.
In March 2021, Sturgeon assured the party’s ruling body that its finances were in order, but three party officials then complained that they’d been denied sight of the accounts, and a prominent indyref2 supporter reported the disappearance of the supposedly ring-fenced funds to the police.
They launched Operation Branchform in July. Sturgeon abruptly resigned in February 2023, citing burnout. Murrell stepped down weeks later, in a row about the SNP’s declining membership. A little more than two weeks after that, the police raided their home.
Questions for Sturgeon
What most of us want to know, said Euan McColm in The Spectator, is how Sturgeon failed to spot what was going on under her nose. When goods including a £2,500 salt and pepper grinder and a £3,000 tea set appeared in her home, was she not curious to know where they’d come from? Did she not find it odd that her bald spouse had bought two £350 Dyson hairdryers?
Well, the pair had a joint income of £250,000 and lived modestly, said Alex Massie in The Times. He could have had a large chunk of spare cash. The £124,000 motorhome stands out as a clue even Inspector Clouseau would have spotted, but she insists she never saw it.
Sturgeon will hope the story now blows over, as will her party, said James Walker in The National. First Minister John Swinney – an old friend of Murrell’s – said he had been “gutted” by the case, and noted that the SNP was its victim. But while some voters will see the theft as the work of a bad apple and move on, for others the damage runs deeper; and questions remain as to how it ever happened.
