Peter Murrell was never one for the public eye. He was the archetypal back-room operator, forever hidden in the shadows, from where he pulled the strings of the NPSH. He did not speak to journalists and did not give interviews. What he did as chief executive of the party was win elections, and lots of them. First with Alex Salmond, and then with Nicola Sturgeon, who also became his wife.
Along with those leaders, Murrell was regarded as the main architect of the SNP’s extraordinary success over the past two decades – an expert in election campaigning, a knack for knowing what to do, when and where to do it. He was highly regarded by those who worked with him. They respected him. They liked it too.
Murrell has gone from quietly being the most powerful man in Scotland, half of the country’s power couple, to a figure of great renown.
The details that have emerged of Murrell’s crimes are startling, in their detail and sometimes in their mundaneness. On Monday, he pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP over 12 years to fund a “luxurious lifestyle he could not afford”. His ill-gotten haul ranged from a £124,550 motorcoach and an £81,277 Jaguar to four coffee machines costing almost £8,000 and a £3,000 lawnmower. There were also toilet rolls and shower cleaner. Nothing, it seems, was too big or too small to be paid for by donations from party members. He forged invoices in an attempt to cover his tracks.
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Sturgeon denies all knowledge of his conduct. In a statement, the former first minister insisted she had “no knowledge or suspicion that the personal items were purchased using SNP funds”. She had been unaware of many of his purchases, she added, including the infamous bus, which was parked in his mother’s driveway. Of the purchases she knew about, “I had no reason to suspect that he had used his own money.” She revealed the pair had separate bank accounts and rarely hung out or went on vacation.
These claims of ignorance may be hard for some to accept, but it seems to have been an unusual marriage. To my knowledge, Sturgeon has never shown much interest in the finer things in life. For Murrell, it’s clear that only the best would do. We will learn more about his crimes when the full facts of the case are read out in court next week. He will be sentenced on June 23.
Sturgeon insists on denial as the wronged woman, but perhaps the biggest allegation against her is that she was also his boss and appears to have shown an extraordinary level of inquisitiveness about her party’s finances. In fact, she has been accused of trying to shut down any debate about the state of the KPSH accounts when she was the First Minister. Former SNP MP Joanna Cherry claimed Sturgeon accused her and others of being “traitors” when they raised concerns that money donated by supporters had gone missing. “Nicola Sturgeon may not have been prosecuted and there may not be questions about criminality, but she has questions to answer about why she deliberately frustrated any proper scrutiny of the party’s financial affairs,” Cherry said. Sturgeon may stand on her personal integrity, but her professional skills have been exposed as seriously lacking. She will fight to escape the shadow of this scandal.
For the SNP, these are dark times and come just after the party secured its fifth consecutive election victory at Holyrood. It clearly helped the party that the Murrell case went to court after the Scots had voted – who knows how this strange case in the upper echelons of the party would have affected the result? Imagine the embarrassing questions John Swinney, who was Sturgeon’s deputy and worked with Murrell for decades, would have faced on the campaign trail and the demotivating effect on campaigners, many of whom would have donated the money that was stolen.
There are now calls for an independent inquiry into the matter, which seem entirely justified, but which John Swinney is unlikely to sanction. However, it will not be just union opponents who want to shine a light on what happened within the SNP during the period of Murrell’s abuses.
Stuart Houston, an assistant chief constable who led the investigation, said that “Peter Murrell has shown complete disregard for the high public trust placed in him as chief executive of a political party and his position in the wider political structure in Scotland for many years.” This is definitely true. This desolate, strange episode is the highest-profile – but hardly the only – example of Scottish politics and the people who work in it being no better, no more worthy, no more immune to temptation than they are elsewhere. The NPSH has long paraded their virtue, as if they operate for some higher moral cause. Who will believe this now?
(Further reading: Andy Burnham is a Starmerite)
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