- Low flying - 12th August 2025
- Naughty Nicola - 11th August 2025
- More crime and punishment - 8th August 2025
In 42 years as a journalist (when he was trained to use simple and clear language, avoiding jargon), political stories as well as looking at key events differently, have always been central for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, so he is intrigued by a new book by the former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon where she says that being arrested left her in a bad state mentally, but the police had launched a top-level investigation into party finances during which a luxury motor home was seized.
It is unlikely that this book will serve the cause of nationalism well, and may prove something of an embarrassment for the Scottish National Party’s (SNP’s) sister organisation Plaid Cymru (Plaid).
it reads more like a pleading self-justifying defence of alleged wrong-doing, than an exercise in setting the record straight.
In it she says for example: “Being arrested and questioned by the police is an experience I’m not sure I will ever get over. When I left the police station I was in a bad state mentally”.
In an excerpt published in The Times, Ms Sturgeon describes June 11 2023 (the day she was arrested and questioned by the police) as the “worst of my life”.
She writes that the year after her arrest was filled with “dread and anxiety”, with no updates on the case, until her estranged husband, SNP Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and party treasurer Peter Murrell was re-arrested and charged in April 2024.
“I retain both faith in and respect for our country’s criminal justice system. However, none of that changes this fact: being the subject of a high-profile criminal investigation for almost two years, especially having committed no crime, was like a form of mental torture”, Ms Sturgeon says.
She was told she would face no further action on March 20 2025 – a month after she and Mr Murrell announced their separation.
Let’s, though, remind ourselves of the details.
The couple’s house was searched as the police probed £660,000 that had gone missing from party accounts, but the investigation into Ms Sturgeon and her SNP colleague Colin Beatie was eventually dropped.
A luxury motor home was seized during the inquiry, and this will not have gone down at all well with the electorate!
Journalistic research has also disclosed how public money was used by the SNP, to upgrade travel arrangements for Ms Sturgeon, pay for a party member’s theory driving test, fund yoga classes, and buy multiple copies of books, including a collection of her speeches.
The spree included almost £10,000 on VIP airport upgrades, and more than £32,000 on team-building exercises. Apart from the yoga classes, driving test and books, other purchases by senior staff included nail polish, and £4,182 for hospitality, as well as accommodation at the five-star Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire.
In all £14.2 million of taxpayers’ cash was spent (some would say WASTED) by Scottish civil servants in three years. Taxpayer money was also spent on wellington boots “for inspections”, as well as China crockery for a meeting room.
The reality is that her tenure in charge of Scotland was nothing to write home about, yet these details are not included in her new book.
In November 2022 the UK Supreme Court kiboshed Ms Sturgeon’s ridiculous attempt to hold a second independence referendum, because (in the minds of voters) she didn’t like the result of the first one.
The court made clear that the law did not allow Holyrood to legislate for an independence referendum without Westminster’s agreement, and it meant there would be no indyref2 on 19 October 2023, as she had planned.
Meanwhile the ferry system in the country appears to have been appallingly badly managed, and given that around 90 inhabited islands rely on ferries this reflects poorly on the SNP’s record in government.
As The Economist has put it: “The SNP’s nationalism has at times eclipsed its competence…polls suggest a mauling for the SNP at the next British general election. The ferry saga has not helped the case for independence-indeed, it makes it likely that voters will toss the SNP overboard”.
This all came as the SNP was forced to expel one of ITS OWN MPs – Angus MacNeil was suspended from its Westminster group.
The Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Western Isles) MP had been suspended after reportedly clashing with party chief whip Brendan O’Hara. He was kicked out after a breach of their ‘code of conduct’. Mr MacNeil said he would stand as an independent candidate.
Worrying details about the leadership election when Ms Sturgeon stood down would have been enough to sink most parties, and as Sky News described it: “The contest has been bitter and fractious with the candidates, two of whom are serving cabinet ministers, trashing and attacking their own government’s record”.
The winner was the Scottish health secretary Humza Yousaf , but he didn’t set alight the cause of independence, and was described in The Times as a “lightweight”, and a “complete chancer”.
Mr Yousaf failed at the polls and has now been replaced, but Plaid sucked up to him, and in a statement on their website declared: “Plaid Cymru and the SNP have today renewed their ‘shared political project’ on securing independence for their respective nations.
“A joint statement by Plaid Cymru Leader Rhun ap Iorwerth and SNP Leader and First Minister Humza Yousaf reaffirmed the two parties’ alliance and commitment to forging ‘fairer and more prosperous nations through independence’”.
The campaign of the then Scottish cabinet secretary for finance, Kate Forbes, all but imploded, after she said she opposed gay marriage. On children born out of wedlock she proclaimed: “That’s choices they (the parents presumably!) have made”. Ms Forbes is a member of the Free Church of Scotland, and takes the Church’s teachings on these matters very seriously, but was still described in an ST headline as a “leadership favourite”.
She also had support in some of the other churches north of the border: The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, The Free Church of Scotland (Continuing), The United Free Church of Scotland, The Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland and The Associated Presbyterian Churches.
The SNP’s head of communications also quit after it emerged he had inadvertently provided bogus membership numbers to a journalist. Murray Foote was told to deny reports the party had lost thousands of members branding them “inaccurate” and “drivel”.
The first real political test for Ms Sturgeon came when Rutherglen and Hamilton West held a by-election, triggered after Margaret Ferrier, a former SNP MP, had taken a train from London to Glasgow even though she had tested positive for Covid-19.
The amazing spectacles we have witnessed, reflect the fact that the SNP (like Plaid), is the broadest of broad churches.
Their membership ranges from dotty dreamers obsessed with Bonnie Prince Charlie, and anti-Englishness (who hold socially conservative views), to liberals (like Ms Sturgeon) who support gay marriage, and accept gender re-allignment. Take out the bits about ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, as well as ‘Ms Sturgeon’, and this could apply equally well to Plaid.
I have had a conversation with a long-standing Plaid supporter, who was deeply against homosexuality, and even believed that lesbianism DIDN’T ACTUALLY EXIST!!
He represented a section of his party which is on the left economically (possessing a strong belief in nationalisation), but is extremely conservative socially.
Another wing of Plaid (as with the SNP), wants independence from England in a socialist republic, socially liberal laws, and (in a way I have never really understood) to rejoin the European Union (EU).
Unlike for its fellow party (the SNP), devolution did not galvanise the cause of independence in Wales, and Plaid has never properly broken out of its language strongholds in the West and the North West, into the South Wales valleys at the level of the Welsh Assembly (WA)/Welsh Parliament (WP)/Senedd Cymru (SC), (the party can only point to a couple of examples, but it YEARNS to do so!).
It is the job of the Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, MS, to hold the two wings of his fractious party together. But uniting around a form of independence may not be enough for them – these two views within Mr ap Iorwerth’s party are simply too far apart.
Perhaps he could do with yoga classes to help him come to terms with this. He might even write a book about it!
The memories of Phil’s, remarkable decades long award-winning career in journalism (during which he witnessed many extraordinary cases of senior politicians trying to defend the indefensible) as he was gripped by the rare and incurable neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in another major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
‘Frankly’ by Nicola Sturgeon is published by Macmillan.
Tomorrow – how news that the boss of Bristol Airport (BA) has described the latest multi-million pound taxpayer subsidy to troubled Cardiff Airport (CA) as “unprecedented”, highlights earlier disturbing information revealed by The Eye.
