The embezzlement of £400,000 of Scottish National Party (SNP) funds by Peter Murrell, the party’s former CEO, is proving an endless source of entertainment. Helpfully, the BBC has even provided a full list of what the money was spent on. Everything from top-of-the-range cars to pencil sharpeners.
But the saga of the embezzlement – which ran for some twelve years before Murrell was finally charged – also raises some serious questions. First and foremost, about the nature and functioning of the SNP.
The SNP presents itself as modern, inclusive and welcoming party, in contrast to the staid and jaded parties of “the Establishment” (even though the SNP has been in power in Holyrood for nearly 20 years and is therefore itself very much part of “the Establishment”).
But the fact that Murrell – the now estranged husband of former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon – was able to defraud the party for over a decade reveals the SNP in a different light.
There was nothing sophisticated about Murrell’s fraud. He spent money on items of personal consumption – or for consumption by Sturgeon – and simply recorded the money as having been spent on something else.
There was a complete absence of transparency, scrutiny, and accountability. There was no need for anything as basic as receipts. Even worse, SNP members who raised questions about the state of the party’s finances were brutally slapped down, including by Sturgeon herself.
At a meeting of the party’s NEC in 2021, Sturgeon warned those asking awkward questions: "There are no reasons for people to be concerned about the party’s finances and all of us need to be careful about not suggesting that there is.”
This stonewalling and bullying resulted a series of high-profile resignations from the SNP NEC and Finance and Audit Committee, and, eventually, from the SNP itself. The then party treasurer, Douglas Chapman, also resigned his post on the grounds that he was not being provided with the information needed to discharge his role.
The politics of those who demanded financial transparency are generally even further away from our politics than those of the average SNP member. But it has to be acknowledged that they refused to be bullied into submission and have now been vindicated.
Murrell’s record of carefree embezzlement reveals a party which took no steps to safeguard the membership’s financial contributions, and which brutally suppressed legitimate calls for accountability.
Not that different, in other words, from the parties of “the Establishment”. In fact, arguably worse. And what is certainly far worse is the issue of the missing £600,000.
In 2017 the SNP launched an appeal for donations to finance a campaign for a second referendum on independence. All donations, the SNP said explicitly and repeatedly, verbally and in writing, would be ring-fenced for that purpose. The appeal brought in £600,000.
But now SNP leader John Swinney has admitted that all the money has been spent. Not on campaigning for a second referendum, but on routine SNP expenditure. So much for earlier SNP claims that it was “categorically not true” and “utter nonsense” to suggest that the donations had been spent by the SNP on its own election campaigning.
Swinney’s laughable justification for spending the money is that the SNP always campaigns for independence, and using the ring-fenced fund for SNP expenditure is therefore legitimate.
Murrell’s embezzlement was the act of a singular individual. Using £600,000 of ringfenced funding for the SNP’s own expenditure was the conscious action of an entire layer of leading figures in the SNP, for which the party as a whole bears legal liability.
Murrell’s embezzlement came to light only after Sean Clerkin, formerly a member of the three-strong “Scottish Resistance” and then the two-strong “Scottish Action”, turned up at a police station in 2021 to complain that his donation to the 2017 appeal had been misspent.
The enquiry into Clerkin’s complaint segued into the investigation into Murrell’s embezzlement. But the original complaint of fraudulent misuse of donations to the 2017 appeal has not yet been dealt with – and has now been given a fresh lease of life. Helpfully, Swinney has effectively admitted that the money was misspent.
It is impossible to be further away from our politics than is
Murrell’s embezzlement raises a number of other issues, even if some of them stray into potential conspiracy theories.
Was holding Murrell’s trial only after the Holyrood election of 7 May a deliberate decision? Has there been defrauding of public money (in the form of grants from the Electoral Commission to the SNP, and VAT refunds on Murrell’s fraudulent expenditure)?
Why was Murrell allowed a plea bargain (pleading guilty in exchange for £60,000 of fraudulent expenditure, spent on gifts for Sturgeon, being deleted from the charge sheet)? And why was Sturgeon herself, certainly no innocent bystander, not charged?
Some Scottish nationalists are arguing that the SNP is being unfairly singled out: Other parties and politicians have done worse than Murrell, as indeed they have, but have not received the same level of media scrutiny.
Murrell’s embezzlement is certainly being exploited by some of the SNP’s political opponents to whip up self-righteous and hypocritical scandal-mongering. But who can blame them? And the scale and nature of Murrell’s embezzlement has inevitably put the SNP in the spotlight.
And many of the most virulent criticisms of the SNP are not coming from hardcore Unionists but from much aggrieved supporters of Scottish independence: The SNP are traitors to the cause – the ultimate crime. They have a point: It was their money which Murrell embezzled.
It is not the job of socialists to help clean up the SNP. It is not "our" party and never will be. But Murrell’s fraud does have a lesson for socialists.
Corruption comes in many forms. Some of it is illegal (Murrell), and some of it legal (freebies from lobbying companies, the revolving door between politicians and big business, getting too pally with the bosses, donations to the Labour Party from big business, giving your mates plum jobs even if they are pals with convicted paedophiles, etc.). Corruption is always immoral, but not necessarily illegal.
Socialists need to root out the "legal" corruption of the labour movement – by way of full accountability of elected representatives, elected representatives to take only a worker's wage, full transparency of the accounts of trade unions and the Labour Party, and a culture of democracy in which those who ask critical questions are not driven out of the movement.
In that sense – bizarrely, and only in that sense – the likes of Sean Clerkin, Stuart Campbell (“Wings Over Scotland”) and Joanna Cherry have ended up as virtual role models. While others kept shtum and looked the other way, they spoke out. §
Comments?We welcome replies, corrections and debate pieces. Contact us