Pandora’s Campervan
To tell you the truth, readers, we’re suffering from a bit of option paralysis at the moment, although happily not in the same way Peter Murrell is.
The endless torrent of revelations following on from Murrell’s conviction a week ago isn’t just fascinating in its own right – it also forces numerous historical issues to be seen in a new light. At any given second there are half-a-dozen different articles we could be writing, but also so many to read that it’s hard to find the time.
We suspect this matter is going to run and run all through the summer silly season because there are simply so many angles and so many unanswered questions.
For example, these baffling stories now merit revisiting.
Details revealed at today’s “narrative hearing” at the High Court mean that the SNP’s stratospheric, ridiculous levels of spending on audio-visuals, office furniture and computer software suddenly make a lot more sense if you view them through a lens of a chief executive with almost unlimited power to spend money without challenge, and who wanted to make a lot of cash vanish in the accounts to conceal the fact that he’d actually spent it all on Lalique salt-and-pepper pots and La Cordonnerie Anglaise intendant valet boxes, whatever the hell those even are.
All of these matters would – you would think – seriously worry the SNP, the ostensible victims of the crime, who’ve lost hundreds of thousands of pounds and seen their supposed political goal damaged beyond repair, yet unfathomably the party is desperate to avoid discussion of the matter and shows less than no interest in getting to the bottom of how it happened.
John Swinney’s approach – “LA LA LA NOT LISTENING CAN’T HEAR YOU SHUT UP NOW PLEASE” – is ironically the exact same one fatally adopted by Nicola Sturgeon at the time the crimes were taking place.
No fundamental changes have been made in any of the SNP’s management structures since Murrell’s departure. The only significant outcome of a 2024 “Governance And Transparency Review” was to make the leader’s position even MORE all-powerful and REDUCE members’ ability to challenge them.
The NEC remains as toothless as it ever did, and that’s assuming there was anyone left in the party with the ability or the gumption to hold the leadership to account anyway, which there isn’t. Which of this list of compliant Sturgeon leftovers and ambitious nobodies do you think is going to risk their own seat on the gravy bus by demanding answers to awkward questions from the leader?
Fear not, though, readers – we’ll have lots (and lots) more on the Sturgeon/Murrell scandal for you in the coming days and weeks. Just as soon as we can figure out where to start.
