MICHAEL GLACKIN: Forget Spitting Image and prepare for more Spewing Sycophancy. Why WON'T Fringe comics satirise the SNP?

Published: 18:25, 11 August 2026 | Updated: 18:25, 11 August 2026 Welcome to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the vibrant and chaotic international arts festival that prides itself on fearless political satire and edgy comedy. Yet amid the more than 4,000 events showcasing the undiluted creative freedom and biting satire of performers from Scotland and further afield, you may notice that one of Scotland’s most extraordinary recent political scandals is strangely absent from the stage. There is, as far as I can see, no satirical show about the uproariously hilarious tale of the £125,000 motorhome that Scotland’s most powerful politician apparently could not see, at least ‘consciously’, and the case of the missing £400,000. The campervan is surely just the vehicle – excuse the pun – for the kind of political mockery and lampooning we all adore when it is directed at Donald Trump, Andy Burnham, or anyone else safely beyond the Scottish political establishment. Indeed, thinking about it, the entire history of the SNP over the last decade is a curiously untapped seam for satirists. One SNP leader and former first minister arrested and tried on sexual-offence charges before being acquitted.  A few years later, the husband, now estranged of course, of another SNP leader and former first minister convicted of embezzling circa £400,000 from the party she led while serving as its chief executive. That same first minister herself arrested as part of the same police investigation, released without charge and, as we all know, no longer under investigation. Or in her words, “exonerated”. Nicola Sturgeon is promoting her memoir at the Fringe - but don't expect any performers to poke fun at her or the SNP And we haven’t even mentioned Derek Mackay, the ferries, or sending a double rapist to a women’s prison. It wouldn’t take much imagination to conjure up a stage show. You could have Peter Murrell standing in front of a giant campervan, obstructing it from his wife’s ‘conscious’ view with his imposing five-foot-ten frame, while frantically distracting her by juggling Montblanc fountain pens for her to catch. Scene two could be Murrell wandering around the stage drying his bald head with two £350 Dyson hairdryers, one in each hand. And for the finale, you could recreate Sturgeon’s famous ‘no comment’ interview with the police. Though, to be fair, we may be in danger of overusing that particular punchline. And the fact that Sturgeon is scheduled to appear at the Fringe later this month to promote her book, means she could even pop in and play herself. It might even boost her new TV career. The rush for tickets would break the internet. However, to those of us who live in Scotland, the lack of a show satirising either the party of government, or Sturgeon, or the campervan is not entirely surprising. Comedians in Scotland that see themselves as edgy anti-establishment types tend to be remarkably Scottish establishment. Indeed, if Scotland had an equivalent of Spitting Image it would be called Spewing Sycophancy. And that perhaps is a more interesting story, because the SNP’s political psycho drama is far from over. In fact, it acquired a new act in Sturgeon’s recent criticism of the party, accusing John Swinney’s leadership of lacking “vision or big-picture thinking” during last May’s election. Poor John. Apart from the fact he delivered that unprecedented fifth consecutive victory for the SNP in this year’s election – despite the fallout from Sturgeon’s arrest and Murrell’s embezzlement charge – Swinney was also her loyal deputy for the best part of a decade. The poor man backed her during her spectacular fallout with Alex Salmond. He stuck by her during the gender self-ID debacle, and during her now largely disgraced handling of the pandemic in Scotland – remember all those deleted WhatsApps? Even in the wake of Sturgeon’s arrest and questioning by police, and after Murrell was charged and convicted of embezzling SNP funds, Swinney did not publicly question Sturgeon’s oversight of the party during her leadership. So, when Sturgeon last week criticised the party under Swinney, what did he say? Yes, you guessed it. He said it was a ‘great privilege’ to have served her. Poor John, indeed. A man lacking both spine and leadership. Bizarrely, or perhaps farcically, it was left to author JK Rowling, a vocal and witty critic of Sturgeon, to make the point that she had been ‘profoundly disloyal to her SNP comrades’. Some of what passes for the SNP’s sensible wing could be forgiven for thinking Swinney might have taken the opportunity Sturgeon’s criticism offered to publicly distance himself from both her and her bizarre policies. But Swinney’s reluctance to speak up probably stems from the fact the SNP allowed itself to be used as a vehicle for the promotion of what was effectively the Sturgeon brand during her leadership, at times seeming to put the interests of the leader ahead of the interests of the party, and indeed the governance of Scotland. And this perhaps best explains why the campervan should be irresistible material for satire, because it serves as a metaphor for the politics of the Sturgeon era, in that it was something enormous, sitting in plain sight, which seems almost impossible to overlook, and yet was. Consistently. Sturgeon's estranged husband Peter Murrell arrives for sentencing after he admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP Incidentally, Rowling accused Sturgeon of being a ‘world-class misogynist’, and described her as ‘the blindest wife ever to enjoy the fruits of a fraudster husband’s theft.’ Strong words? Not really. You may remember Sturgeon labelled some critics of her gender reforms as ‘deeply misogynist, often homophobic, possibly some of them racist as well’. Thus, political opponents are not merely wrong, they are morally defective.  Yes, it starts with accusations that critics are talking Scotland down, and progresses to them being labelled racist homophobic misogynists, or moral defects. Like Trump, Sturgeon’s politics comes down to the self-appointed virtuous against the wicked. Meanwhile, perhaps even more remarkable than the absence of a show about the campervan, is the fact that Sturgeon herself is booked for a couple of appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe. In her interview last weekend, she said she will not visit Murrell in prison because she has stopped speaking to him.  She even described herself as a ‘mug’ for having worried about his wellbeing earlier this year. Murrell was convicted and imprisoned only weeks ago.  The SNP has just written off the remaining value of the motorhome. Its latest accounts, covering 2025, also show that Murrell was still owed £60,000 from a loan he made to the party in 2021. And now Sturgeon is appearing at the Fringe. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up. Meanwhile, Sturgeon dismissed two of her most high-profile critics, Rowling and former Nationalist MP Joanna Cherry, as ‘obsessed’ with her. The irony, of course, is that unlike Sturgeon, these are women of genuine substance, successful in their own professional lives, accomplished in their fields, and capable of commanding attention without having to reinvent themselves as B-list TV celebrities. Hopefully somewhere on the Fringe there will be someone willing to at least crack a few jokes about Sturgeon and the campervan she couldn’t, at least ‘consciously’, see. If there isn’t, I may have to write a play myself. Carry on Campervan, a Scottish political farce, starring a £125,000 motorhome, two Dyson hairdryers, and countless costly pens.  An Emperor’s New Clothes story in which there is, apparently, absolutely nothing to see here.