Why SNP's pleas of incompetence in Peter Murrell embezzlement case are all-too plausible
Only a party that was supremely naive could have left itself so open to an embezzler like Peter Murrell
“Today I am horrified, I am betrayed.” John Swinney’s reaction after former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell pled guilty to embezzling £400,000 from the party was essentially the line being pursued by every nationalist politician in any position of power in recent years.
Swinney stressed this once-trusted party official was “exclusively responsible” for what happened to money donated and raised by party members. Instead of funding a campaign for independence, we now know it was used to buy all manner of goods, luxury and mundane.
There was a £124,000 motorhome, a £57,000 Jaguar car, a £3,200 coffee machine, a £1,200 space telescope, and a £550 1:30-scale model helicopter, but also a £43 Grand Theft Auto video game and a Jamie Oliver wooden spoon set for less than £15. All bought with money stolen from the SNP.
Coffee mornings and jumble sales
Yet, seemingly, no one in a position of sufficient authority in the party realised there was anything wrong until the police moved in. When some members had tried to raise concerns about the party’s finances in 2021 during a meeting of the SNP’s ruling body, Nicola Sturgeon, then Murrell’s wife, party leader and First Minister, insisted: “There are no reasons for people to be concerned about the party's finances.”
Swinney said yesterday that he shared the “overwhelming anger felt by SNP members”, adding: “What I am thinking about, I've not been able to stop thinking about, is the decent people who have stood with me at coffee mornings and jumble sales, raising the money, paying their money to party headquarters. People who I know don't have much money to rub together, but have paid their membership subs to keep the SNP afloat because they believe in independence.”
But he also offered reassurance to any potential future donors, saying that he had been working to “strengthen our governance structures and our party finances”. “The party now has a modernised backroom operation which, as we saw in the election result, is highly effective in supporting campaigning around the country,” Swinney said.
So, essentially, there was one bad apple but everything is all right now. We await to hear if the SNP will consider trying to compensate donors whose money was taken or whether it considers itself to be just as much a victim as they are.
Supremely naive
If it is the case that Murrell acted entirely alone and no one realised what he was doing, then this surely begs the question, why not? It should not be possible for a party with reasonable financial controls and checks and balances on the use of power to be deceived to such an extent by a single individual, even while he was its chief executive.
Only a party that was supremely naive could have left itself so open to an at-times brazen embezzler like Murrell, who, in the words of Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Houston, diverted money from SNP funds into his own accounts to “bankroll the lavish lifestyle he craved but could not afford” over a 12-year period.
Some voters may be sceptical about assurances that there is ‘nothing else to see here’. However, we should remember the woeful track record of the SNP in government. After all, this is the party that has spent nearly half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money on two ferries and is currently in the midst of a project of 19 years and counting to upgrade the road between Perth and Inverness to a dual carriageway.
After Murrell's guilty plea, the rest of the SNP are pleading incompetence – and that part of this quite extraordinary story, at least, unfortunately seems all too plausible.