IT’S the waiting they can’t stand. After the SNP’s former chief executive and its treasurer were arrested by police investigating allegations of fraud, dread has descended on the party.
Senior figures now accept as inevitable that ex-leader Nicola Sturgeon will, at some point, be invited to assist officers with their enquiries. Her office has said she will help detectives “if asked”. Just a few weeks ago, Sturgeon was considered the SNP’s greatest asset. Now she could be its biggest liability.
When the Scottish Parliament reconvened on Tuesday after the Easter recess, Sturgeon was nowhere to be seen. The nationalists’ official version of events — and bless them for trying — was that she’d always planned to stay away while new First Minister Humza Yousaf established himself.
The arrest of the party’s treasurer Colin Beattie — two weeks after Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell, until recently the SNP’s chief executive — collided head-on with Yousaf’s attempt to launch a programme for government. Beattie has now stood down. Instead of facing questions about his plans, Yousaf was reduced to giving a running commentary about the ongoing police investigation.
Yousaf’s attempts to manage the scandal engulfing his party have been like a man fighting a fire armed only with a bag of kindling and a can of lighter fluid.
In just a couple of minutes on Tuesday, Yousaf gave us “Of course I’m surprised when one of my colleagues is arrested”, “I’ll have to speak to Colin — he’s still in the police station”, and, in response to a question about whether the SNP was acting in a criminal way, “I don’t believe it is.”
Yousaf continues to resist calls from opponents to suspend Murrell and Beattie from the party over their involvement in the police investigation into what happened to more than £600,000 raised for a referendum campaign that never took place. Party sources point out that, were he to do so, he’d have to do the same to Sturgeon if police invite her to make a statement.
Nobody at Holyrood is paying much attention to Yousaf right now. Rather, Scottish politics is in a state of paralysis while its participants wait to hear whether representatives of Police Scotland have got round to interviewing Nicola Sturgeon.
