Excess, Bad Taste and Embezzlement
The bombshell news of Peter Murrell’s guilty plea on Monday to embezzling the precise figure of £400,310.65 while he was the SNP’s chief executive, has dominated the week, and may dominate Scottish politics for months to come. He is now being held on remand. He will appear again on 23 June for sentencing. He is likely to face a lengthy prison sentence.
After his guilty plea, Stuart Houston, the assistant chief constable in overall charge of Police Scotland’s investigation, known as Operation Branchform, said the investigation had been “extremely complex” as Murrell had worked hard to cover his tracks.
“Peter Murrell has shown utter contempt for the high public trust placed in him,” Houston said. “He abused his privileged position with access to Scottish National party funds to divert cash into his own accounts and bankroll the lavish lifestyle he craved but could not afford.”
This is a seismic historic moment, and represents a disgraceful betrayal of people’s trust. The full list of goods that he procured reads like something from Imelda Marcos’s cupboards or a Liberace spending spree. Mont Blanc pens, crystal salt and pepper shakers, luxury coffee machines and computer games, a £124,550 Niesmann+Bischoff motorhome, a £81,277 Jaguar I-Pace, and a £3,070 robotic lawnmower were part of the haul. While some were shocked by the level of political corruption, others were thrown by the sheer bad taste of it all.
The whole sordid affair raises profound questions for the SNP and their due diligence. It may stain for a very long time the belief in politicians and the political process. From the outside, it looks as if they are all corrupt and all the same.
While there are very serious questions for the SNP to answer, there are wider issues at play. Will such a betrayal fatally undermine belief in the SNP itself, or indeed the wider independence movement?
I think the party will have to work very hard to restore public trust but the wider movement is unlikely to be damaged by such chaos. Independence isn’t about any one individual, and Murrel’s actions, while bizarre and seemingly pathological, have nothing to do with the battle for Scottish democracy. He stole from the SNP.
But in the inevitable orgy of schadenfreude that the Scottish press is now gorging itself on, there are some strange bedfellows. From the maxim that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’, you now have the most extreme Unionist loyal scribes celebrating Sean Clerkin and Stuart Campbell like long-lost brothers. You can undoubtedly wonder at the disastrous behaviour of the SNP to control, audit and inspect their out-of-control CEO, but also marvel at the deep-seated animus that unites a very strange collection of people.
This animus has very little to do with fiscal probity, or a long-term commitment to transparency in politics. Now in full public view you can see at least four conterminous groups which often merge in a swirl of conspiracy:
- The Salmond Cult, juggling simultaneously the idea that the entire Scottish judiciary is utterly corrupt, but also magnificent in dishing out the verdict on their leader’s absolute innocence and vindication
- Those who just Hate Nicola Sturgeon and would do anything to see her downfall. The reasons for this are multiple, but have some common themes
- The Alt Nats who are more nativist in their nationalism and believe that the entire cause of independence has been destroyed by the SNP, and now wish some alternate party to rise from the ashes, at some point
- The Unionist Press pack who – because they are in an unacknowledged political death-spiral, are lashing out at whatever opponents they can
None of this unfortunate reality takes anything away from the extraordinary conduct of Peter Murrell and his disgraceful behaviour, nor does it minimise the political questions the SNP face.
But it does put in some context to the current shambles.
The questions the SNP face are not, despite the chaos about finance, they are about politics, what comes next and if and how they can move on from this catastrophic mismanagement.
There are other, wilder forces at play. As Andrew Tickell (via Alastair McIntosh and Kathleen Nutt) recounts:
See Peter Murrell and the paradox of the ‘political death wish’: Peter Murrell and the paradox of the ‘political death wish’ | The Herald
The Murrell fiasco is, ultimately, a godsend to a Unionist media and political class that have just been humiliated. As Neil Mackay recently observed: “Unionism has lost the argument in Scotland. Unionism offers the Scottish people nothing but recrimination and nostalgia.”
Face the facts: Unionism has lost the argument in Scotland | The Herald
The problem is that, despite the glee of the feeding frenzy, when it subsides, will there be anything coherent left to say?
There is a twin challenge here, a mirror. Can the Horseshoe Unionists find a positive narrative beyond hysterical glee? Can the SNP offer enough humility and transparency to persuade people that they are trustworthy?
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Bella I received two emails from you this morning, this one and another with no title, which is about Barcelona beginning the fight back against short term tourist lets which deprive locals of housing.
I followed the link to the blog to comment and it was a 404 error.
Have I connected with anything other than Bella Caledonia?
Worried about viruses etc
Hi Susan, no viruses just a post that had coding errors in it so had to be deleted – but you got the email because it had first been published. Will try and fix and publish later as its really interesting.
Thanks! It was a very interesting article on an important issue..
I suspect that the answer to both of your questions is ‘No’.
Time to re-read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, about wanting to be caught.
Given the pattern of deception, it might also be worth revisiting his testimony to the Scottish Parliaments’ Salmond inquiry.
Or thinking it over, could he have been some kind of long-term MI5 plant, under stress, who eventually went off the rails? Hence the strangely happy look in court on 2nd June, that people noticed.
Sneering touch re. Salmond comment- surprised if some in the Scottish judiciary are NOT corrupt! COPFS certainly is, as are all fhe pensioned,retired, and rehabilitated(Lioyd!) involved in the snaring..
‘…Every 10 years a great (wo)man.
Who paid the bill ?
So many reports.
So many questions.’ Brecht
i) …for the accountants who signed off the SNP accountants over that decade
ii) …the SNP high command who to a (wo)man saw nothing
iii) …the police who took years to unravel the international links. [When ordinary folk buy goods on Amazon with a Visa card, we don’t get involved with Andorra/ BVI/ Cayman Islands…so how come it seems that he did? Perhaps he also took personal delivery of the camper van from Shanghai, which further delayed the investigation?]
iv)… the Scottish judicial authorities who managed to delay this case till after the recent Holyrood election
V) …the union for Edinburgh High Court janitors who agreed to work on Bank Holiday Monday to get the case over and done with in record breaking time!
Two corrections:
a) I have discovered that I was unfair to High Court janitors on suggesting collusion by their union when in fact the hearing was held on a UK Bank Holiday which is not however a public holiday in Edinburgh..
Mea culpa.
b) I have also discovered that, far from visiting Shanghai to take delivery of the motorhome (with attendant guidebook for leisurely English visits once COVID was over) the reality is that:
‘The Niesmann+Bischoff iSmove motorhome was bought by Murrell from an English company, where the former SNP chief executive had it transported 300 miles to his 92-year-old mother’s home in Dunfermline.’
Which reinforces not only my previous general points about cover up but does guarantee that 125/400ths (i.e. 31%)of the highly complex, subtly hidden, transnational embezzlement imbroglio was related to one single transaction with its neuralgic centre approximately 4 hours drive from the police HQ where thousands of officers were slaving day and night to provide the healthy antidote of sunshine to this exceedingly murky business; centred on the home of the all powerful Scottish First Minister.
You’re going to have to let your hatred of Alec Salmond go at some point. There’s no need to keep firing bullets into the man. If you want independence – really want it – then all of us have to stop this Salmond Sturgeon thing. The SNP are damaged by both the Salmond thing and now the Murrell debacle, and, so too is the reputation of our judiciary (or whatever it’s called). That’s just a fact. However, we have to move on from the behaviour of individuals back to creating a strong active movement, and one that we protect from the SNP. Yes, protect, certainly they should be the political voice of the movement, the problem is they took control of it. They have their place, we have to have ours.
As to Mr. Murrell, his behaviour was bizarre, and he’ll pay the price, but I know people who put money into that scam who died without the referendum they were promised time and time again materialising. These people were led to believe that it was just around the corner – that is the bigger crime.
No hatred here, just pointing out some of the inconsistencies.
I liked the bit when a lot of the SNP finance committee resigned, the external auditors resigned, and the replacement auditors probably reported the organisation to the police, and the party leader told everyone that there’s nothing to see here, and finances are very healthy, and she had been too busy to look over them, and naybiddy else is getting to see them. No comment. Ever. Maybe she was too dazzled by the salt’n’pepper grinders on the dining table to see anything. A tearfull TV interview has been the usual next step. Maybe they will even get divorced. Should do that before the warrant sale of the family home. MC Shogun got a year for nicking a laptop. By that reckoning, MC Murrel will be due for release in the year 2836.
The current First Minister appointed a big-time thief as the Chief Exec of his party. But he has sorted it all out, although he isn’t saying how he managed that. Belief trumps truth? I think that even more so than the rest of the UK, Scots tend to think that this is normal, and that includes most of the Scottish media, mainsteam and sidestream, although the Daily Mirror front page was good. As an example, Mike’s opinion piece veers towards blaming unionists. Belief trumps truth?
In what was am I blaming Unionists?
Because that’s the way you are? It’s a poor article on the biggest politiclal fraud in the UK this century. You sound like you payed for a robotic lawnmower on your party’s Amazon account on the party’s debit card. And naebuddy noticed eppert fae the fowlks thit did. Bullshite.
Brilliant.
Biggest political fraud this century ? You have conveniently forgotten PPE !
I mean, it looks like a conspiracy, even if it was largely a conspiracy of people who ‘many times turned their heads and pretended they just didn’t see’ to paraphrase Bob Dylan.
I was interested in the selection of Murrell’s computer games. I suppose Grand Theft Auto (criminal enterprises) and Pac-Man (insatiable greed/pursued by spirits) stand out, but it would be good to get both a full list and playing times. Were there any strategy games? Any games even loosely associated with Scottish independence (a question I once asked the Guardian games editor)? Anything based on Scottish culture? I mean, Grand Theft Auto was originated by a Scottish studio, but set mainly in the USA.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/25/peter-murrell-what-bought-embezzled-funds-snp-chief
Did he play online? What were his gamertags? Does anyone remember playing with him?
And who is going to be the first to bring out a game (or mod) based on this episode of political embezzling?
The SNP cannot wish this issue away by blaming Peter Murrell for both the crime and enabling it to go undetected for so many years. The people who donated monies and those within the party who tried to highlight that there was an issue deserve better than ‘drawing a line in the sand’. The SNP have lost trust and support already partly due to this issue as witnessed by the reduction in votes at 2024 GE and recent Holyrood election. If they do not address the fallout it will continue to fester and negatively impact both the party and inevitably the wider independence movement.
A party enquiry by an outside, independent auditor to identify who knew what and who turned a blind eye to the criminal activity would help the party learn from this issue and also help rebuild public confidence in the party. This may result in some senior party members having to stand down from leadership but this may be no bad thing as the party is looking a bit stale to many people anyway. The best time to do this is as soon as possible as we are just into a 5 year electoral cycle.
If the leadership of the party who were senior members during the time of Murrell’s tenure do not allow an enquiry it will be construed by many as though they have something to hide regardless of whether they do or not.
Another enquiry?
All these enquiries never seem to achieve much, except line the pockets of those involved…
People are complaining it is mysoginistic to ask Sturgeon to go into further detail about what she knew. This is rubbish.
If Murrel had been married to a man, the same questions would be asked… we’re not talking about criminality, the police have looked at that, and are satisfied Sturgeon knew nothing, we’re talking political responsibility, which would include Salmond and Swinney too…
The fact of the matter is that lots of people, myself included, pointed out that a husband and wife team at the head of party and government was redolent of corrupt regimes like president Marcos and his wife (another maniac, but her penchant was for pricey shoes) of the Philippines, or General Juan and Evita Peron… (“don’t cry for me Bonnie Scotland”)…
The fact is that the power couple of Murrel and Sturgeon were arrogant and dismissive of constructive criticism and so it’s hard to feel much empathy with either them or the SNP top brass…
A husband and wife team should never have held so much power, and never should again…
Such a terrible look for Scottish demoxracy…
Douglas – I agree with much of what you have written especially the husband/wife combination. I speak as an SNP member and want to ensure that the party acts to ensure this type of crime cannot arise again within the party. This includes not only changing procedures to ensure more transparency and accountability in but full accountability from all senior members of party who were or should have been aware that there were financial disparities within party. I doubt this can be achieved without an independent party investigation into exactly who knew what?
Regardless of whether this happens or not the fallout from the Murrell investigation should hasten the transition to a younger leadership which had no direct involvement with the Peter Murrell or Nicola Sturgeon. This will mean John Swinney standing down as leader which was probably going to happen during this Parliament anyway but I imagine will now occur sooner rather than later.
Who isnt fed up of the SNP by now… The independence movement has been hijacked by their bullshit managerial class, and what do they do with power bestowed in them but expose us to ridicule and shame, one embarrasment after another, one scandal after another, and endless in-fighting and squabbling…
I agree with Simone Weil, who points out that all political parties lead, inevitably, to what we have seen happen to the SNP in recent years… faction and internecine war, power struggles and corruption…
Weil claimed the inspiration for modern political parties was the Catholic Church, and further pointed out they are an illusion, and that not even their most zealous activists could explain point for point what they actually stand for in any detail..
Scrap and outlaw political parties and come up with an alternative way of choosing our political representatives, which in the age of internet, wouldnt be so hard…
To the chronic malaise in the rigidly hierarchical, completely tone deaf SNP (the Murrel scandal could kill independence for a generation, surely?), we can add the never ending shenanigans and fancy footwork in the Labour Party by candidates virtually indistinguishable from each other and Starker too and his cronies, to what end no one knows, plus the Tories too, hollowed out by so much corruption, cynicism and stupidity as to be rendered unelectable…
In Spain, where corruption is a whole way of life for the elite, as many as 8 of Aznar’s former PP ministers have been to prison, while Sanchez’s government has been left reeling by a string of scandals which have seen his former number two processed for dodgy dealings over Covid masks, and only last week, a true shock, when darling of the Left, former president Zapatero was indicted for allegedly intervening to secure a 58 million euro bail out for airline company Plus Ultra, who fly to Venezuela, during the pandemic, in exchange for kick backs channelled through the private company of his daughter press and publicity firm….
Where does lobbying end and corruption begin?
Mostly people on the Left maintain Zapatero’s innocence and blame Spain’s notoriously Francoist judges, but from what I can see, criminal or not, it.looks pretty bad for ZP who has lost his aura as virtually the only honest politico in Spain…..
In both Spain and the UK, everyday citizens are simply fed up of politics, and the fault must lie with the party system surely, because what they deliver is chaos, corruption and sleaze more than anything else…who needs them?
Douglas,
I thought Spain was perfect?
Can always bring back Franco if your fed up with democratic politics.
For all his faults nobody could accuse him of been corrupt.
Your ignorance shines through again, John, Franco was utterly corrupt, like all dictators are…
Douglas,
It was meant as a joke…..
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Unless you can come up with a theory as to how to change human nature?.
Sorry for being slow on the uptake, John, it’s all that Spanish sun…
I think all you can do in terms of corruption is limit terms in power…
Murrel should never have been CEO for almost 15 years and, of course, should never have been allowed to continue in post when his wife became leader…
It”s a really bad look for the indie movement…
Was the guy mentally ill or something? Compulsive buying from Amazon?
Predictably, the whole fiasco is being weaponised against the SNP by the leaders of political parties whose funding arrangements are in large part opaque. Whatever its shortcomings, the SNP is not in hock to wealthy donors. That makes the embezzlement all the more egregious. Certainly, the SNP needs to professionalise its operation – but for me the real tragedy lies in its personal dimensions. Why would you betray everyone – including your wife and your ideas – for the sake of absurdities like £1000 pepper grinders; and how can someone supposedly so close to you turn out to be a total stranger, of whom it turns out you know nothing.
well, if you are racist or religiously intolerant then you are probably employed by bella caledonia or some other supposedly left wing critique, otherwise you are mainstream and not worth talking about
What does that even mnean?
That someone stuck 50p in the attention seeking quote machine this morning
a pound actually & only one tune available which some could view as being a metaphor for the state of Scottish politics
it mneans I wis pisht, apologies
Wis ? You still are.
Are you worth bothrin aboot, no, thot not.
Given the amount of time it took Police Scotland to work through this case, I looks like Murrell covered his tracks well. I actually find myself having sympathy for the SNP. The crime was committed against them and their donors. During the debate in Holyrood on Tuesday, many unionist MSPs took time to ignore the debate topic and attack the SNP. It looked very much like victim blaming.
Stewart – you are correct – the victims here are the members of public who donated the money some of whom wouldn’t have been SNP members. The SNP had a duty of care to ensure the money was handled safely and used for the purpose it was originally donated for. Peter Murrell embezzled some of this money and has been rightly convicted.
The SNP owe it to the donors and it members to:
1)be open and transparent about whether any lack of rigour in internal organisation and procedures contribute to the party failing to identify and thus curtail Murrell’s actions.
2)investigate whether any warnings of wrongdoing were properly investigated or were overlooked.
3)ensure that appropriate changes to party organisation and procedures are implemented to try and ensure this doesn’t arise again.
4)remove from senior post in party any officials or members who obstructed any possible investigations during this time.
This is in essence an internal party matter for SNP but as they are seeking electoral support from public the more transparent they are over this issue the greater the chance they have to regain the trust from public that they have lost due to this whole sorry episode.
The unionist political parties and media will try to make capital out of this issue as they are entitled to do but the reality is it is an internal SNP party matter. I suspect some unionist politicians are using this episode as a form of therapy to deal with their disappointment with recent Holyrood election results?
I have some sympathy for ordinary members and officials but not at the senior level. How can it be victim blaming them when Murrell *was* the SNP and should have been accountable to it and made to be so like anyone else in the party? It is like NS now saying she is the real victim whilst at the same time trying to make it into a misogynist trope about women being blamed for their husband’s crimes. All this actually makes one less sympathetic, less sure of the truth, not more.
As Joanna Cherry said today, this is all a straw man argument – the obvious issue for the SNP internally is not the ‘thorough’ police investigation Swinney keeps going on about, but how on earth was this allowed to happen by the party, why were concerns raised internally about finances actively shut down by NS and others; why did she notice nothing, ever, about her husband and party Chief Exec’s ostentatious purchase (her excuses about all this today were so hollow it does beggar belief).
But John is right, if we accept the criminal investigation is over, this is all now an internal SNP matter. But just like they did when people seriously questioned what was going on with the money, they will shut this down now too. Why? Well, we can only speculate but it seems obvious to me that some very senior people have stuff to hide and they will ensure whatever that is, will not come out. NS crying round the media act is all designed to deflect from this rather than face it. She will get some sympathy but I suspect for many, it will have the opposite effect.
Political parties can close ranks and slam the doors on the truth and transparency as a matter of course. It is not unusual. But the SNP seem pathologically prone to do this, like a very minor version of a Russian regime who lie as a default. Why this should be I don’t really know – those closer to the party will have a better idea, but only if they are willing to be honest and open and I find such supporters just as good as the leadership at denial, conscious or otherwise. ‘Nothing to see here, move along now, oh and no victim blaming, please!’.
Yeah, right.
The truth will not be coming. The result? Trust is dead and that is the real consequence here. Imagine how different it could be, even assuming things had been allowed to get to the point of Murrell’s confession? NS, Murrell – joint statement: ‘we apologise to the party, its members, and the Scottish public for this affair that has brought such disrepute to the SNP and government. Clearly something has gone very wrong in our internal governance and procures to allow this to happen at such senior level and unnoticed for so long. We will launch an investigation immediately into finding out what went wrong and if appropriate, who was responsible. No-one will be immune to scrutiny. We will publish our finding in full in the shortest timescale possible to re-assure the public of how seriously we take this and to rebuild trust’.
@Niemand, yes, exactly: Nicola Sturgeon has been using deflection to claim she is being criticised for what she did, when the really potent criticism is for what she did *not* do (but should have). Particularly in the face of people predicting this was exactly the kind of corruption you’d expect from such an arrangement. All her arguments predicate the (dubious) unquestioning loyalty of marriage, and could not be reasonably applied if the party Chief Executive was someone she was not married to. And such arrangements she was responsible for.
My only disagreement is that in my opinion there is no basis for the electorate ever to trust elected politicians, that simply abrogates its responsibility to act as permanent (if collective) watchdogs over them. Are we teaching that as part of citizenship? The one demand of the Chartists that was never won was yearly elections, which goes to the heart of what its campaigners saw about the nature of elected representatives (not Burkean trustees but delegates):
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/on-the-record-podcast/on-the-record-the-peoples-charter/
You don’t demand yearly elections if you trust ’em.
Interesting point about trust. I could modify in the light of that to say, no trust or distrust assumed.
(NB in my final paragraph it should read ‘NS, Swinney – joint statement: . . .’ not Murrell).
I must be getting old because today, reading the papers in the pub as you do, I found myself thanking my lucky stars that I had opened the Sunday Times, a newspaper I would never buy, and the pages they devoted to the Murrel fiasco… There, I actually got some information…and read a good piece by Magnus Linklater…
I really disagree the SNP hierarchy deserve sympathy. They have completely shut down debate since Sturgeon, as numerous former staffers and politicians keep telling us, , and left all the power in the hands of a rather oddball husband and wife team…
People who raised their voices to object were shown the door, like Kenny McAskill, one time Justice Minister…
Swinney thinks he can just ride this out. I really doubt it. He doesn’t seem to recognize there is something deeply wrong with the way the SNP has been run for the last 10 years..
As for Sturgeon, I am.sure that I, like many others, are fed up hearing of her self aggrandizing publicity by now. She had the top job in the country and she screwed up big time.
This is supposed to be a movement, Scottish independence, not a husband and wife parlour game…
I am busy empathising with the working class manual workers who have £2,600 worth of salt and pepper grinders on their working class dining table after their being a working class lawyer…..
Scottish public seriously let down once again by all the media who completely failed to pay attention in the first place or investigate concerns raised long ago by those inside and outside Holyrood. The Scottish media failed in their duty to be even remotely curious even when resignations happened. No questions asked. Bernard Ponsonby has recently admitted they were all “asleep at the wheel”. I no longer read any “alternative” media in Scotland I can’t say whether Bella or anyone else was curious or asking questions at the time.
For what its worth, I recall the outrage at Boris Johnson and his very expensive wallpaper for No10 and how Nicola said at the time that it just illustrated the corruption of Westminster …..BBC Laura Kuensberg failed to ask her if she gave as much as a passing thought to even just the “optics” of a £80,000 Jag sitting in her drive or the expensive handbags and pens she sported when child poverty and homelessness remain so high in Scotland. Cardboard baby boxes for the workers and Lalique for the likes of her as representative for Govan. The media including podcasters who all seem to visit each others own shows have declared the SNP “landslide” election results – the lazy cosiness of the MSPS and the media is as much to blame for how long it has taken to uncover this crime.