GRAHAM GRANT: Shoe-gate yet another example of why the Minister for Cover-ups must be brought to heel over an inquiry

By GRAHAM GRANT, SCOTTISH HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR Published: 17:54, 15 June 2026 | Updated: 17:59, 15 June 2026 There have been some memorable controversies in political history but Shoe-gate is a surprise entry. In case you missed it amid the World Cup partying, it’s a row about a pair of Nicola Sturgeon’s high heels. Not just any old footwear, but Kurt Geiger green snakeskin shoes costing £290. Well, nothing but the best for Nicola. She put them up for auction at an SNP fundraiser and her now-estranged fraudster husband Peter Murrell snapped them up after bidding stalled at £1,500 – for a mere £4,000. As you’ll remember, Murrell, the former SNP chief executive, helped himself to more than £400,000 of the party’s cash while his wife was SNP leader and First Minister. Just months after Murrell ‘returned’ the shoes to Ms Sturgeon, she wore them at Downing Street on a visit to Theresa May, who was then Prime Minister. Nicola Sturgeon's Kurt Geiger green snakeskin shoes, costing £290, have caused controversy The disgraced Peter Murrell is due to be back in court for sentencing next week Murrell had previously used cash that he pilfered from SNP coffers to buy luxury shoe valet cases from online retailers. Shoe-gate, exposed by The Scottish Mail on Sunday, raises more uncomfortable questions, such as whether magnanimous Murrell used stolen money to buy back his wife’s high heels. But it also underlines that this scandal isn’t going anywhere ahead of Murrell’s sentencing next week. John Swinney is chained to this extraordinary farrago like the captain of a sinking ship lashed to the wheel. He may attempt a Houdini-like escape, and his World Cup junket provided a little respite, albeit at our expense. But he is a zombie leader only five weeks after his re-election – and his Cabinet of duds and no-hopers is stuck in a corrosive stasis. This is the government that never was – elected on promises that are unlikely ever to be fulfilled. It’s led by a man whose every move is overshadowed by Murrell, who got his job running the SNP bureaucracy thanks to his old pal Mr Swinney. In that role, we now know Murrell had unfettered access to the SNP bank account and could sign off his own expenses. The First Minister, a senior figure in the party and government for many years, is inextricably linked to this poisonous mess. Among other big jobs, he was Finance Secretary and Deputy First Minister, an ultra-loyal consigliere to Ms Sturgeon. He knew where the bodies were buried – and helped to bury a lot of them. Mr Swinney was Minister for Cover-Ups long before he ascended to the highest political office in the land, and that training has proved extremely useful. Before his trip across the Atlantic for the Scotland match on Sunday, he was fighting tooth and nail to prevent a Murrellgate inquiry, and for now he’s succeeded. But MPs on the Scottish Affairs Committee are under mounting pressure to order one, and even if they don’t it would be folly to suppose we’ve heard the last of it. Much like Sir Keir Starmer, who is clinging to his job with his fingernails, Mr Swinney and his government are in paralysis. A significant policy was announced on June 2 – legal moves to restrict mobile phone use in classrooms – but it’s unlikely that many Scots were even aware of it. Whatever you make of the plan, and it remains to be seen how it would be implemented and enforced, it was worthy of a debate – which didn’t happen. That’s because the SNP is up to its neck in a quagmire of sleaze, with more revelations on a daily basis. The oxygen needed for sensible discourse on any aspect of the SNP’s agenda, such as it is, drained away long ago. Now even Alistair Bonnington, Ms Sturgeon’s old law tutor, a former honorary professor of law at Glasgow University, has weighed in to demand an inquiry is held into Murrell. Mr Bonnington told the Mail it was ‘fantasy’ to claim that the ‘wrongdoing was restricted to one individual’ and raised concern about a ‘suspicion… that the Scottish Government has influenced the police and the Crown for party political purposes’. Certainly, any inquiry should consider why Murrell’s court hearing was delayed until after the Scottish election, on May 7. We’re told his lawyers needed more time to pull their case together, though the Crown tells us that Murrell ‘gave instructions to his legal representatives to explore the possibility of resolution of the case by way of a plea of guilty’ on March 3. We know that Dorothy Bain, KC, the Lord Advocate, tipped off Mr Swinney before the extensive indictment against Murrell publicly came to light. Yet we’re being told there’s nothing to see here and we should all move on – by the very people who may have most to lose should an inquiry ever get under way. Ms Sturgeon silenced SNP members who asked awkward questions about the state of the party’s books while she and her husband were at the top of an organisation which one activist has likened to a ‘criminal syndicate’. As the Mail revealed last week, Murrell – an unlikely Godfather – paid off the bill for the £124,000 motorhome he bought with stolen cash just weeks after he was warned against trying to sideline the critics who had raised concern about the SNP’s finances. Ms Sturgeon is legally off the hook, although polling suggests the vast majority of Scots don’t buy her version of events – that she was entirely clueless about her husband’s elaborate 12-year fraud. Her claim that she has ‘no conscious memory’ of seeing the 24ft motorhome parked outside her mother-in-law’s Fife home has cemented her position as a figure of national ridicule. For all of these reasons, drawing a line under Murrellgate is an impossibility for Mr Swinney until he bites the bullet and orders an inquiry – or until he appears before a Commons probe, should it materialise, and provides full and honest testimony. John Swinney has insisted there is no need for an inquiry into the Murrell scandal Even then, it will continue to haunt his every step, dashing all hopes of a fresh start for Scotland under a supposedly rejuvenated Swinney government. On May 26, the First Minister told MSPs that ‘fairness will be built into the very foundations of the new nation state we are seeking to build’ under his ‘ambitious’ new administration as it tackled the cost-of-living crisis. It took more than a little brass neck to get these words out given that the previous day his erstwhile comrade Murrell had pleaded guilty to brazen fraud – which helped to bankroll the luxury lifestyle of his pious politician wife as she railed against inequality. While the postponement of the Murrell court hearing was one of the luckiest breaks imaginable, it has come at a high cost for the SNP. It’s the butt of a million jokes but the punchline is that Scotland is going nowhere while this discredited crew remains in government. Murrellgate is to Mr Swinney what the Alex Salmond scandal was to Ms Sturgeon – a source of unending woe. It will define what remains of Mr Swinney’s premiership, which might be shorter than he anticipated, crushing the life out of his scandal-ridden regime. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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