A year after Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell's arrests, SNP dominance has been shattered – Jackie Baillie

Labour realises the political and personal undertaking that switching from the SNP to Labour represents for many voters

This time last year, as the Scottish political village absorbed the shock resignation of Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister, police swooped to arrest her husband. Peter Murrell, by then the SNP’s former chief executive, was arrested in a dawn raid and later released without charge, pending further investigation into party finances.

The event was accompanied by the now iconic blue investigation tent on the couple’s lawn, the bizarre discovery of a £110,000 camper van at Murrell’s mother’s home, a raid on the SNP party HQ, and the arrest and release of party treasurer Colin Beattie.

By then the SNP had lost 30,000 members, lost its communications chief over the mis-direction of the press on that figure, and failed to allay concerns about £666,953 raised between 2017 and 2020 to fund independence campaigning and a party treasurer’s resignation over a lack of the “financial information” necessary to do the job.

A police vehicle reverses into a tent set up outside the home of Peter Murrell, former SNP chief executive, and former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Both were arrested but then released without charge (Picture: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)

Independent-minded sheep

A year on, and after the inevitable arrest of Sturgeon, we await the conclusions of the police and possibly the procurator fiscal’s considerations of Operation Branchform. That unimaginative title simply does not match the detail of the saga contained therein. In that year the SNP has lost its way, the governance of Scotland has plunged into chaos, and a luxury Jaguar car sold to the “We buy any car” site has been thrown into the mix.

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That was the least of it. A deeply divisive leadership battle threw up a continuity candidate who hasn’t been up to the job of even continuing with the toxic political agenda left behind. Senior MSPs have been suspended, a rival has crossed to the pre-tarnished Alba party, and one MP has left the party to spend more time with his sheep, claiming they show more signs of independent thought than his former colleagues.

Policies have been jettisoned in the face of public anger and panic, the economy has flatlined, the health crisis has deepened, and the ferries still aren’t ready. Yet, such is the sense of in-built arrogance that the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn feels he can make lame jokes about requisitioning the infamous campervan for travel to this summer’s Euros.

The sense of entitlement of a party in power for too long reached its apex with failed Heath Secretary Michael Matheson concluding it’s somehow OK to charge the public purse for his £11,000 iPad bill. Matheson misled the public over the affair and, worse, the First Minister continues to back him.

Sense of betrayal

When last year’s arrests happened, the SNP’s political dominance was beginning to slip. Now it’s shattered. The chaos engulfing the Tory party is matched by incompetence and entitlement of senior SNP politicians. On the doorsteps, their own members tell us of the sense of betrayal they feel over leaders they once admired.

The latest polling has Scottish Labour set to return as Scotland’s major party at Westminster, with the SNP trailing behind. That won’t happen without former SNP voters, who may well be former Labour voters beforehand, moving their support across. None of us in Labour underestimates the political and personal undertaking that will be for many.

But we will work as hard over the next weeks and months to earn the trust of voters as much as the SNP has dispensed with it.

Jackie Baillie MSP is Scottish Labour’s deputy leader