It’s been another excellent week for bad news about the SNP.
It began with the release of a recording of a meeting of the SNP’s NEC in March 2021 in which the then party leader Nicola Sturgeon claimed that the SNP had “never been in a stronger financial position” and warned NEC members to be “very careful about suggestions that there is something wrong with the party’s finances.”
Two days after the leak the then SNP party treasurer and member of Holyrood’s Public Audit Committee Colin Beattie was arrested and questioned by the police as part of its criminal investigation into the SNP’s finances.
These events provided the backcloth to, and thereby completely derailed, newly elected SNP leader Humza Yousaf’s subsequent Holyrood speech in which he had wanted to “reset” the SNP government’s priorities.
Instead, in response to questions from reporters, Yousaf came out with lines such as:
- He “did not believe” that the SNP was “acting in a criminal way”. (But he’s not absolutely sure?).
- The timing of Beattie’s arrest was “far from ideal”. (So what is a good time for your party treasurer to be arrested?).
- He was “always surprised” when one of his colleagues was arrested. (But surely he should be getting used to it by now?)
Yousaf has also admitted that the SNP has not paid back in full the £107,000 loan given to it by its then CEO Peter Murrell (and husband of Sturgeon) in 2021. Only around half has been repaid. But if the SNP is financially secure, why has it not paid back the loan in full?
Although opinion polls still show the SNP well ahead of the Tories in voting intentions, Yousaf himself has a lower party leader approval rating in Scotland than Rishi Sunak. By large majorities, voters see Yousaf as incompetent, weak and out of touch.
Yousaf has refused to suspend Beattie and Murrell from SNP membership. This is inconsistent with how other SNP members subject to police investigation (Michelle Thomson and Natalie McGarry) were treated. Yousaf is therefore now accused of double standards
And worse news for the SNP could be in the pipeline. Two of the three signatories to the party’s 2021 accounts have been arrested and questioned by the police. The third signatory was Nicola Sturgeon herself. So, her turn could be next.
Like Murrell, Beattie was released without charge. But even if the two of them are never charged, the political damage has already been done: The SNP currently looks more like a Ponzi scheme than a political party.
The succession of scandals has also highlighted the political nature of the SNP’s core membership and supporters.
Those most vigorous and outspoken in defending the SNP are tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists who inhabit a parallel political universe in which Scotland suffers under the combined weight of the Tory jackboot and Westminster yoke, and anyone otherwise minded is a Quisling who will be expelled from Scotland once independence is achieved.
Anyone who thinks that the SNP’s brand of nationalism is civic and joyous should wake up and smell the coffee. Unfortunately, however, the pro-independence left has yet to sober up from its intoxication with Scottish nationalism.
According to Socialist Worker, paper of the SWP: “British nationalists and unionists are delighted that the SNP is reeling.” But surely serious class-struggle socialists should be delighted as well?
Inevitably, the SNP’s crisis is portrayed by the SWP as “a diversion” from the real issue, defined in this case as: “The democratic outrage carried out by the Tories and the Supreme Court in denying an independence vote.”
Socialist Worker also bemoans the fact that: “When the Spanish state battered Catalan independence supporters and arrested Catalan political leaders after an unauthorised referendum in 2017, huge numbers of people took to the streets. Nobody demonstrated after cops took Murrell into custody.”
But this is not comparing like with like!
The Socialist Party Scotland (SPS) goes a step further and buys into the tinfoil hat conspiracy theory: “It’s very likely that the Police Scotland investigation, launched in the summer of 2021, was seen as an opportunity to weaken the SNP and public support for independence itself.”
The SNP, continues the SPS, needed to be weakened because “its support for the break-up of the UK has put it on a collision course with the overwhelming majority of the ruling capitalist class.”
Like the SWP, the SPS portrays taking delight in the SNP’s crisis solely as the preserve of the ruling capitalist class: “they have welcomed the current SNP debacle”. In fact, the SPS actually goes further and takes the side of the SNP:
“We oppose the capitalist state intervening in this way. The capitalist class has, of course, a long history and current practice of attacking the workers’ movement through the use of anti-union laws, the courts and the use of the state generally.”
True that. But what has it got to do with a police investigation into possible fraud? Does the SPS apply the same ‘logic’ to the police investigation into possible fraud in the construction of Unite the Union’s conference centre in Birmingham?
Socialist Appeal also buys into the conspiracy theory: “The question then arose [after the search of the Sturgeon-Murrell home]: Is this all for show? Social media was awash with scepticism towards the whole saga.”
But only certain sections of social media were “awash with scepticism”. Socialist Appeal would surely benefit from broadening its horizons and placing less reliance on the social media which it currently follows.
Socialist Appeal continues: “One does not have to go to the extremes of conspiracy to see some truth here [in claims that there was political interference from the Tory government]. The timing of Murrell’s arrest has certainly had the effect of kicking the SNP while it is down.”
Having dismissed the SNP leadership as “yet another venal political elite” – surely the kind of people who ought to be kicked while they are down? – Socialist Appeal’s response to the SNP’s crisis is: “For a Scottish Workers' Republic and for world socialist revolution.”
Dame Edna Everage and Barry McKenzie may be dead. But Dave Spart is alive and well.