IT’S quite the statistic: the arrest rate of former SNP First Ministers of Scotland is now 100 per cent.
At 2.29 yesterday afternoon, Police Scotland tweeted that a 52-year-old woman had been arrested “as a suspect” in an ongoing investigation into the funding and finances of the Scottish National Party. That woman was Nicola Sturgeon.
Four years ago, Sturgeon’s predecessor and former mentor Alex Salmond was arrested and charged with a number of sex offences. He was later cleared in court. Yesterday, it was Sturgeon’s turn to see the inside of a police interview room.
In truth, the arrest of a woman considered, until recently, one of the pre-eminent politicians of her generation was hardly unexpected. Within weeks of her resignation announcement in February, Sturgeon’s home was raided by police and her husband, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, taken into custody.
A couple of weeks later, the party’s past treasurer, Colin Beattie MSP, was also arrested. Since Sturgeon was — alongside those two men — a signatory to the SNP’s books, the chance that police wouldn’t eventually wish to discuss matters with her seemed vanishingly unlikely.
Sturgeon did not suffer the indignity of being arrested at home Rather, she attended a police interview by appointment. After seven hours of questioning, she was released without charge, pending further investigation. She later issued a statement in which she declared “I know beyond doubt that I am, in fact, innocent”.
Regardless, Sturgeon’s humiliation is overwhelming.
Here is a woman who rose to power on the back of a message that her party was fundamentally different to others. Where the old Unionist parties were riddled with sleaze, the SNP offered a more honest politics.
Under normal circumstances, the SNP would - after the departure of Boris Johnson from the commons - be doubling down on that message, right now. Instead, the party finds itself exposed within the walls of a glass house of its own construction.
Sturgeon’s successor as SNP leader and First Minister, Humza Yousaf, was — during the recent leadership campaign — delighted to be seen as the continuity candidate. Now his closeness to Sturgeon looks more hindrance than help.
Interviewed by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday mornings, Yousaf said Sturgeon “was in a good place and doing well, for sure”. That positive assessment was to age very badly, very quickly.
For a very long time, it appeared the SNP was unassailably strong. Now, with the departure of its favourite bogeyman, Johnson, from politics and the deepening crisis sparked by a police investigation, that may be changing.
Sir Keir Starmer and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar may, today, be quietly confident that their party could, at the next General Election, reclaim much territory lost to the SNP.
