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During 23 years with the BBC, and 39 years in journalism (when he was trained to use simple language, avoiding jargon), reporting major reversals of fortune has always been central, and here our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry looks at the extraordinary political events now unfolding in Scotland, with news that the police are continuing their high-profile probe into the finances of the Scottish National Party (SNP), and have arrested the former leader Nicola Sturgeon.
Previously he has described how he was helped to break into the South Wales Echo office car when he was a cub reporter, recalled his early career as a journalist, the importance of experience in the job, and made clear that the ‘calls’ to emergency services as well as court cases are central to any media operation.
He has also explored how poorly paid most journalism is when trainee reporters had to live in squalid flats, the vital role of expenses, and about one of his most important stories on the now-scrapped 53 year-old BBC Cymru Wales (BBC CW) TV Current Affairs series, Week In Week Out (WIWO), which won an award even after it was axed, long after his career really took off.
Phil has explained too how crucial it is actually to speak to people, the virtue of speed as well as accuracy, why knowledge of ‘history’ is vital, how certain material was removed from TV Current Affairs programmes when secret cameras had to be used, and some of those he has interviewed.
Earlier he disclosed why investigative journalism is needed now more than ever although others have different opinions, and how information from trusted sources is crucial.
It’s been like watching a car crash in slow motion.
In fact to use another awful car-based metaphor, looking at the Scottish National Party (SNP) has been like seeing an expensive limousine, reduced to being an old jalopy and towed away to the breakers’ yard!
The SNP were once dominant in Scotland, destroying the mighty Labour Party.
They won a huge number of votes in the independence referendum of 2014, and have controlled Scotland’s devolved legislature since the 2007 election as a minority government, and were a majority government from the 2011 election.
They have been a minority government (although still in control), since the 2016 election.
Now, though, the political landscape in Scotland looks VERY different.
A new independence referendum is off the agenda, perhaps for the rest of the decade.
In November 2022 the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish Parliament (SP) could not legislate for a vote without Westminster’s permission.
Polls indicate, anyway, that support for independence is waning.
Belief in breaking away from the UK has NEVER achieved a sustained and clear majority of the sort which might have forced British prime ministers to accede to another referendum.
“The bubble has burst”, one nationalist has said. Another declared: “Independence is inevitable, but it is not clear how we will get there”.
The SNP’s former leader, Nicola Sturgeon, has also been in the news for all the wrong reasons.
On February 15 Ms Sturgeon announced her resignation saying that she was tired, but the departure took on a different light altogether when, two months later, police investigating the alleged misuse of party funds raided the home she shares with Peter Murrell, her husband and the SNP’s one-time Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
The police were reportedly searching for a woman’s razor, jewellery and a wheelbarrow, among other things. A luxury motorhome was also seized, and taken to a police lockup. It was thought the vehicle could be worth more than £100,000.
A romantic movement that drew on a vaulting narrative of history suddenly looked humiliatingly small, and now even among the SNP’s supporters there were serious questions about where their money went.
It APPEARS that the SNP raised £666,953 through various appeals between 2017 and 2020, saying they would spend the funds on an ‘indyref2’ campaign.
But in the subsequent years, audited financial accounts issued via the Electoral Commission (EC) revealed a party with far less cash in the bank.
Some backers had major queries, after figures showed the SNP had only £97,000 at the end of 2019, and total net assets of about £272,000.
The people who had donated cash believing it was for an independence campaign, have raised serious concerns about where their cash had gone.
A leaked video of Ms Sturgeon taken in 2021 at a meeting of the SNP’s ruling body seems to show her warning senior members to be “very careful” about suggesting there were “any problems” with the accounts, however for some it recalled the line in Hamlet – “the lady doth protest too much, methinks”.
In what looked like an angry exchange, she said: “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”.
But plainly the police looking into the SNP finances WERE concerned, because earlier this month Ms Sturgeon was arrested and questioned by detectives, although she was soon released without charge.
SNP MP Angus MacNeil said: “This soap-opera has gone far enough, Nicola Sturgeon suspended others from the SNP for an awful lot less”.
The First Minister of Scotland (and SNP leader) Humza Yousaf should have considered suspending her from the party if she refused to resign, according to the SNP Member of the Scottish Parliament Ash Regan, who has also called for “decisive action”.
Around the same time as Ms Sturgeon’s resignation, the SNP’s national treasurer quit, too. He claimed he wasn’t given enough information to do the job properly.
Douglas Chapman, the MP for Dunfermline and West Fife, resigned after only being in post for a few months, and it was reported at the time that his decision to stand down was linked to a mounting row over the ringfenced independence funds.
The situation became even worse for the party at about this period when formal complaints were received by Police Scotland (PS), so officers launched Operation Branchform.
Of course the Labour Party is rubbing its hands at all of this.
The SNP’s polling, already sliding before Ms Sturgeon quit, has since cratered. Mr Yousaf, who was elected as her successor by party members on March 27, has weak personal ratings.
Labour could leap from one seat to 24 in Scotland if today’s polling were repeated at the General Election expected next year, according to a projection by YouGov on May 24. Its gains would include Glasgow South.
That would ease Sir Keir Starmer’s task of forming a majority Labour government in Westminster. It would also provide a toehold for returning to power at the next elections to Holyrood in 2026
That’s a reversal of fortune on an unbelievable scale.
Perhaps Labour were driving the car..!
The memories of Phil’s decades long award-winning career in journalism (when reversals of fortune were often reported) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disease Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
