The 52-year-old former SNP boss was briefly arrested on Sunday.
(Photo: via REUTERS)
London The brief arrest of former Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Sunday is another blow to Scotland’s nationalists. This not only puts the unsolved financial scandal of the Scottish National Party (SNP) about the whereabouts of campaign donations of 600,000 pounds (around 700,000 euros) back into focus.
The separation from the United Kingdom that the SNP is striving for is also becoming increasingly unlikely, now that the image of the independence movement has been badly damaged politically because of Sturgeon.
This is illustrated most clearly by calls from SNP politicians to suspend Sturgeon from the party she led three months ago. Longtime SNP MP Angus MacNeil said it was time for a political distance from Sturgeon until the end of the investigation.
Sturgeon’s successor, the new party and government leader Humza Yousaf, is under pressure. The 38-year-old is himself a political pupil of the former party leader and is considered to be weak in leadership.
Yousaf not only has to prevent public support for independence from falling any further. Most recently, only 39 percent of Scots were in favor of going it alone. The SNP failed in a referendum on independence in 2014. Attempts to initiate a new referendum have so far failed due to objections from London and the courts.
Financial scandal weighs on political situation
However, Sturgeon’s successor must also ensure that the SNP does not jeopardize its leading position. Since the outbreak of the financial scandal, the party has lost around ten percentage points in opinion polls.
The 38-year-old is himself a political pupil of the former party leader and is considered to be weak in leadership.
(Photo: Reuters)
The Scottish Labor Party is the main beneficiary of its weakness. At the last general election in Great Britain in 2019, the SNP had won 48 out of a possible 59 seats in the House of Commons in Westminster. Pollsters are now assuming that Labor could make significant gains in Scotland.
The background to the expanding crisis is a financial scandal with dubious loans, possibly slush funds – and a mobile home costing more than 100,000 euros. Police have been investigating since 2021 whether £600,000 of party donations collected by the SNP for the pro-independence movement have been diverted to other, inappropriate channels.
>> Read here: How the SNP financial scandal is torpedoing Scotland’s drive for independence
The party leadership denies this and has rejected all allegations. However, it is not clear who bought the luxury mobile home that the police seized in April and which the SNP claims was originally intended to be used as a “campaign bus”.
Sturgeon is the third SNP politician to be arrested
Although Sturgeon had to expect that she too would be summoned by the police for questioning, she reacted to the arrest and the subsequent seven-hour cross-examination in shock: “Finding myself in this situation when I was sure that I hadn’t committed a crime is both a shock as well as deeply upsetting,” said the 52-year-old after her release on Sunday evening.
In April, her husband Peter Murrell, long Secretary General of the SNP, was arrested, questioned and released. Shortly thereafter, former Treasurer Colin Beattie met the same fate. So far, no charges have been brought against any of the three SNP politicians.
But the most important questions are: What did Sturgeon know? And did she want to forestall the financial scandal that was uncovered shortly thereafter by resigning in February? “I understand some people’s view that I knew this was going to develop and that’s why I left,” Sturgeon said in the spring. But she insists, “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
>> Read here: Former Scottish Prime Minister Sturgeon briefly arrested
Sturgeon is the second former Scottish Prime Minister to be arrested by police. In 2019, her predecessor and mentor Alex Salmond was arrested on charges of sexual assault and later acquitted.
More: Successor to Nicola Sturgeon: Humza Yousaf leads Scottish Nationalists.