The arrest of Peter Murrell, the husband of Scotland’s former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, has cast an entirely different light on her unexpected decision to resign two months ago.
Suddenly, Ms Sturgeon’s shock announcement starts to make sense.
If she knew then that her husband — the SNP’s long-serving chief executive until last month — was about to be arrested, she must surely have taken the view that it would make her position as First Minister untenable.
But did she know?
Exactly two months ago, a little more than a week before her resignation statement, Ms Sturgeon published her tax returns for the previous six years.
This was seemingly the move of a woman in full campaign mode — voluntarily revealing the details of her personal finances in a bid to bounce the prime minister at Westminster into following her example.
Something he did just six weeks later.It was thought that only a politician determined to stay for the long haul would go to such lengths, and it banished at a stroke all the rumours that she was preparing to step down. DailyMail reports.
And yet, nine days later, Ms Sturgeon announced she intended to resign after all.
The reasons she gave were never entirely convincing. It was not, she insisted, as a result of ‘the latest period of pressure’ on her, notably the furore over the controversial Gender Recognition Reform Bill that was passed by Holyrood and then vetoed by the UK Government.
Rather, her decision — she claimed — was the result simply of knowing ‘almost instinctively, when the time is right to make way for someone else’.
She added: ‘In my head and in my heart I know that time is now. That it is right for me, for my party and for the country.’
Fair enough, but it all sounded rather vague.
However, was there a further clue to Ms Sturgeon’s true motives in newspaper reports that appeared shortly before she made her resignation statement?
It was revealed that after an 18-month investigation into a £600,000 fund aimed at promoting an independence referendum, detectives had begun interviewing key witnesses in the case.
Ms Sturgeon had the luxury of being able to promise — repeatedly — a rerun vote for most of her period as First Minister since confirmation by the Supreme Court that the Scottish Parliament has no authority to hold a second independence referendum came late in her tenure.
Mr Yousaf has no such luxury.
He can trot out all his favourite clichés about how the UK government is denying Scottish democracy by not authorising a second vote, but when it comes to the sunlit uplands of independence, he has nothing to offer his movement.
This is a problem if you’re the leader of a party whose sole defining mission is that aim. You need to be able to convince your followers that you know how to bring that about.
The scandal of the unbuilt ferries — two desperately needed new vessels that have yet to be completed despite costs having trebled ‑ remains a running sore that threatens to define SNP competence (or incompetence).
the scandal of the unbuilt ferries — two desperately needed new vessels that have yet to be completed despite costs having trebled ‑ remains a running sore that threatens to define SNP competence (or incompetence).
