JOHN MACLEOD: John Swinney plays the victim card with some aplomb

Published: 20:41, 28 May 2026 | Updated: 20:45, 28 May 2026 It's First Minister’s Questions amidst what has been a humiliating week for the Scottish National Party. Its chief executive of two decades has just been convicted of graft, pillage and wholesale larceny of his party’s piggy-bank that would excite admiration in Zimbabwe. Lists of the loot yet tumble forth, like the conveyor-belt finale of The Generation Game. You want to stand up and holler, to plinky-planky Debenhams muzak, ‘Dinner service… fondue set… the cuddly toy… the campervan!’ The target for the massed opposition is as broad as a barn door. Yet Anas Sarwar, teeing off for Scottish Labour, misses the barn. Booker Prize judges have weighed the merits of shorter novels than his rambling open question. The First Minister could have nipped for a cup of tea. Mr Swinney can reply. Tall, drawn. His tie of Lenten, penitential purple. He and all his colleagues, he laments, are victims too. There has been a breach of trust ‘which I unreservedly condemn… I think Mr Sarwar should change his script, because his script is not working.’ Sarwar lurches back into the fray with dollops of faux outrage. That arrogant disposition, he laments, is what has destroyed so many people’s lives in the First Minister’s party. John Swinney was adamant that he won't back a public inquiry He has been at the heart of the SNP for over 30 years. This is a culture he helped build... but, yet again, the roiling, read-aloud word salad gives Swinney – a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief – ample time to frame a response. Will he back a parliamentary inquiry? ‘No, I won’t back a public-parly-purbly inquiry,’ stumbles Mr Swinney. We’ve just had a police investigation, he whumphs further, that has gone on for five years. It identified criminality as the source of this particular issue and ‘I don’t think there is anything a parliamentary inquiry can add… I would rather concentrate on the priorities of the people of Scotland.’  The Scottish Labour chief at last gets to the point that should have been first and foremost – that Peter Murrell was a man John Swinney himself appointed, back in 2001 – but all impact is lost. ‘That was an astonishing attempt at victim blaming by Anas Sarwar,’ laments Swinney, suddenly far less nervous. ‘And he should be ashamed of himself. There is one person and one person alone who is responsible for the embezzlement of my party’s funds and that is Peter Murrell…. I promised I would unite my party, which is why there’s 58 of us over here and seventeen of them over there.’  Scottish Labour howl as Malcolm Offord makes his FMQs debut for Reform. Earnest. Heavy. As if about to unfurl a measuring-tape, express sorrow for your loss, and pray directions to the body. Murrell? The scandal? A matter for complete ignoral. Rather, does the First Minister not know Norway’s energy minister thinks it daft that 70 per cent of the United Kingdom’s gas is imported from his nation’s North Sea fields, while those on the UK side are shut down? Any extraction, parries Swinney, ‘must be compatible with our journey to net zero.’ And energy security, given the latest mayhem in the Middle East. ‘Mealy-mouthed,’ barks Offord. Uppermost in all thoughts, of course, is that looming by-election in Aberdeen: much more drill-baby-drill from Offord to come. Russell Findlay hauls us back in with the mien of some cleric inveighing against sin. The SNP didn’t stop Murrell. They enabled him, ‘people want to know why Nicola Sturgeon wasn’t in the dock alongside her husband,’ and the Lord Advocate should publish all information relating to this case. The First Minister responds with the square root of hee-haw. And then Alex Cole-Hamilton, for the Lib Dems, unaccountably weighs in about ferries. Will CalMac indeed be summer-ready? The perfect excuse for John Swinney to preen that the Nats have wrested Shetland from 76 years of Liberal bondage. And, with one bound, he was free as, elsewhere, a little bald chap thought wistfully of a file in a cake. 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? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.