After Nicola Sturgeon effectively suspends herself from Holyrood, Humza Yousaf should suspend her from SNP – Jackie Baillie

Even if she succeeds in her ambition to obtain a driving licence, Nicola Sturgeon is learning that there is no such thing as a quick get-away.

Ms Sturgeon can run, but she cannot hide, though she is trying her best with a new low of not turning up at Holyrood this week to represent her constituents. Having effectively suspended herself from attendance at Holyrood, she should now be suspended from the SNP.

Why? Because despite her attempts to dodge scrutiny, a leaked video has put the former First Minister right back on centre stage of the secrecy and cover-up ahead of revelations about the SNP financial scandal. The release of staggering footage showing Ms Sturgeon appearing to close down any debate on the internal party finances tells us a lot about how the party was run on her watch.

At a time when the most basic questions were being asked about party funds, the footage, from a meeting of the SNP’s governing national executive committee, lays bare how Ms Sturgeon was, at the very least, reluctant to have any scrutiny of the finances. The comments, recorded in 2021, show the former First Minister warned those at the online gathering to “just be very careful” about any suggestion that there were problems with the party’s finances.

She declared: “The party has never been in a stronger financial position than it is right now.” In other words, nothing to see here and challenge me if you dare. This came as the leadership rejected proposals from senior officials to hire a fundraising manager who was to have oversight of the money being given to the party.

Party treasurer Douglas Chapman and Joanna Cherry walked off the SNP’s national executive committee in frustration shortly afterwards over the lack of transparency in SNP finances. There followed a police complaint over the handling of more than £600,000 of donations to the SNP, a controversy which led to a police forensic tent in a suburban garden, the arrest, without charge, of the recently resigned party chief executive who is married to Ms Sturgeon, and the fall of the House of Murrell.

You only have to watch the video to know what her view was on financial transparency and to get an insight into what Ms Sturgeon’s attitude was to having her authority questioned. If this is the way she ran the party, it will make voters wonder how she ran the government. In fact, you do not have to wonder. A lack of transparency and accountability has been the hallmark of SNP governance in Scotland.

This week the hapless Humza Yousaf will try to escape the long shadow of the Sturgeon regime with a reset button. Really the button would have to be the size of that campervan seized as part of the police investigation to have any effect. His programme for government, that long list of empty promises he made to skim home in the leadership election, will be stalled on the runway for as long as the continuity candidate is shackled to the Murrell inheritance.

Humza Yousaf has a decision to make about his predecessor as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon (Picture: Russell Cheyne/PA)

Poor Humza cannot even outrun his own legacy as Health Secretary in a country where one in seven people are on an NHS waiting list. Congratulating himself on things being worse in England simply won’t cut it, to borrow a phrase. Scotland is able to spend 26 per cent more per head than England under the established funding formula. People deserve better treatment and parliament deserves transparency on where and how the money is spent.

Of course, don’t hold your breath for any of that. The continuity First Minister is so punch-drunk from each reeling revelation about the Sturgeon-Murrell era that he won’t have time for the day job. The dashboard warning lights are flashing on the SNP’s finances as the membership and income nosedive – that’s according to the party’s current financial stewards.

Sending Ian Blackford onto the airwaves yesterday to insist that the SNP is fighting fit showed a laughable denial of reality, if not a basic lack of awareness. Blackford’s Westminster nickname was “the undertaker”, a reference to his long business association with the funeral insurance services industry. It’s an appropriate moniker for the man readying a political corpse for a burial which won’t be long coming.

The clock is ticking down on that July 7 deadline for the submission of SNP accounts to the Electoral Commission and still they have no auditors. With the Westminster parliament also returning this week, the clock has already started running on a vote to suspend Covid-busting former SNP MP Margaret Ferrier from the Commons

Expect every dodge and delay to prevent the inevitable by-election in Rutherglen and Hamilton West which Labour is ready for any day. Just as Ms Sturgeon cannot hide, neither can the SNP outrun that date with destiny. In that by-election, campaign voters will see that the secrecy and cover-up at the heart of the SNP is mirrored in the party’s governance of Scotland.

Last December, the Auditor General for Scotland issued a scathing report on the Scottish Government’s finances, saying there was an “overwhelming need… to improve accountability and transparency”. It is a report which Mr Yousaf needs to read again and put into action, both in government and in his party.

Ms Sturgeon has effectively suspended herself from Holyrood. If Mr Yousaf wants to show he has taken the advice to heart he should suspend her and her husband, Peter Murrell, from the SNP.

Jackie Baillie is MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader and her party’s spokesperson for health