Now What?

The BBC’s livestream of Peter Murrell’s ‘narrative trial’ in the High Court in Edinburgh showed the man in handcuffs, being led away until sentencing later this month. For the avoidance of any doubt the image hammered home the seriousness of the embezzlement case. It is a major blow to the leadership of the SNP, to the case for independence, for the credibility of mainstream politics. It is NOT (by any stretch of the imagination) the ‘biggest political scandal in Scottish and British politics.’ It palls into insignificance next to the Prince Andrew scandal, the Profumo Affair, the Arms-to-Iraq affair, the death of Dr. David Kelly and the Hutton Inquiry, the News of the World royal phone hacking scandal, Windrush, Michelle Mone or the case of the Kincora Boys’ Home, to name but a few.

This is not in any way to minimise the seriousness of the Murrell Affair, and the crisis it represents for the SNP, and, as they remain the key vehicle for change for the independence movement. for that wider movement. But it is worthwhile to put the Murrell affair in its historical context.

It is not remotely helpful for those within the SNP to say nothing about all of this, or to just hope it all goes away, and that somehow the wider repercussions can be just ignored.

As Craig Berry writes [The Faction that was Right]: “When former SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell finally pleaded guilty to embezzling over £400,000 of party funds, I took no joy in the news. Instead, I felt a profound sense of exhaustion. For those of us who led the SNP Common Weal Group (CWG), this systemic rot was not a revelation. It was the devastating, precise culmination of a civil war we fought (and lost) against a secretive party machine years before the police ever crossed the threshold.”

While the SNP are quite right (imho) to reject any public inquiry (at either Holyrood or Westminster) as suggested by Lord Jack McConnell this week, they are quite wrong (imho) to resist an independent internal inquiry. The policy of A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away won’t wash.

Taking Responsibility

I find myself agreeing with (most) of what Robin McAlpine writes here: “The biggest mistake you are making is misunderstanding the nature of this scandal for the public. They are sick of powerful people abusing their power. They are in a cost of living crisis and the list of luxury purchases is nauseating. They think you’re all at it (unfairly) and that you all have each other’s backs so justice is never done (which is perfectly fair).”

“They don’t want you to explain yourself. In fact they desperately don’t want you to tell them they they are wrong and you are right. You cannot litigate your way out of this with detail. This is an emotional public reaction. Think Sub-Postmaster Scandal – no-one wanted the corporations to explain how it was just one of those things. People felt an emotional sense of injustice.”

“If you cannot meet that emotion head-on you will pay a price. The only way to counter the emotional anger being directed at you is penitence. You must be seen to suffer pain. You must be punished, pay a price. If you don’t and people think ‘you got away with it’, you will never escape this. They do not think you are the victim so pack in playing victim. Not a single person has taken responsibility for what has happened. For an extended period you need a ‘masochism strategy’. Be seen to pay a price. Then and only then is redemption realistic.”

McAlpine is right. The tactic of circling the wagon isn’t going to work. The need for a real break is overwhelming.

Having said all of that, the problem is not confined to the SNP.

As Berry writes: “Under Murrell and his inner circle, power was aggressively stripped away from local branches and centralized within the Chief Executive’s office. Scrutiny was framed as disloyalty. The party’s financial ledger was guarded like a private corporate secret, hidden even from the very members who funded it.”

There’s a dark irony that the very same could be said of the Alba party that so many SNP critics went on to join. As Berry admits: “… a decision at times I regret.”

Glee and Schadenfreude

All of that being said, the engorged hyperbolic response to the current crisis by the Unionist media is astonishing, and demeaning. The social media scroll is festooned with a relentless barrage of glee and schadenfreude.

Would that not be the case if the shoe was on the other foot? Probably, yes. But the tone of the attacks from across the media is one-dimensional and hysterical. It feels like a media class who have experienced twenty years of defeat, getting their own back. Coming only weeks after a Holyrood election in which the Unionist parties which they faithfully campaigned for were heavily defeated, this is the only form of retribution this group can hope for.

There is also a sense in which there is nothing else for them to say. This is a media-political elite in Scotland which refuses to consider change to anything at all. Bottle Deposits Schemes are wildly utopian, rent control is abhorrent, and constitutional change is unthinkable. Their default position is Just Say No (to anything). So this scandal has come at a great time for them. But it will end. Murrell will be sentenced and will got to prison. Sturgeon is leaving for London and will fade from public view.

While it is easy to glory in the absurdity of it all, the detail of the decadence and the raw sense of entitlement that oozes from every anecdote, there are bigger issues in the world that need our attention.

Now What?

The writer Dani Garavelli has put it that: “To suggest she (Sturgeon) has no responsibility for that, and to link that lack of responsibility to her sex, is a form of infantilisation that will do women no good in the long-run.” I think she might be right in that, although it is also true that Nicola Sturgeon has faced overwhelming misogyny in her political life.

It’s clear that, if the SNP are to recover from this, they need to take it seriously to achieve any form of redemption. We’ll see if that’s possible.

But one of the problems for the assailants of the former First Minister is that much of their animus pre-dates any of this by some time. And much is confused. The entirely legitimate case against the Sturgeon-Murrell leadership gets mixed up with all of the other complaints and pathologies. The embittered ex-colleagues wandering social media platforms gushing resentment join hands with different tribes of the Enragés, each nursing their wrath to keep it warm. It’s like a constitutional form of the Horseshoe Theory.

The SNP and the wider independence movement can survive this moment, but only if it learns the deeper lessons from it, and acts with some humility.