STEPHEN DAISLEY: Swinney's problem is not on the opposition benches, it's the enemy within. The money is spent... and so is he

By STEPHEN DAISLEY, SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL SKETCH WRITER Published: 20:20, 7 June 2026 | Updated: 20:20, 7 June 2026 The SNP embezzlement scandal has thus far trained its spotlight on Peter Murrell and his penchant for pilfery, and on his estranged spouse Nicola Sturgeon, a strategic mastermind with the observational skills of Mr Magoo. In a sense, this focus isn’t surprising. Murrell is the offender, guilty in the eyes of the law and in the court of good taste. (The man spent four grand on a gold-nibbed pen. His real crime isn’t fraud, it’s vulgarity.) As for Sturgeon, it’s hard not to be riveted by the story of a politician suddenly surrounded by pricey tat and yet so committed to public service that she didn’t notice. In time, however, the story is going to move on from individuals to structures, from Murrell’s light-fingered ways to the practices that allowed him to get away with it for so long. This phase will drag the spotlight away from the SNP’s former chief executive to the party itself and its glare will be especially harsh. John Swinney might be riding high on his election victory right now, but he should prepare to come crashing down to Earth soon. Because there will be questions about the party’s acceptance of false receipts and the credulity shown over conspicuous purchases such as the camper van, the Jaguar, and a £2,125 James Bond-inspired fountain pen. How did no one notice? Or did some notice but decide it was politically unwise to do so? I’m not suggesting Swinney engaged in or had any knowledge of criminality. It is simply that he is the leader and when headlines go bad and polls go south it’s the leader who invariably gets the blame. It will be especially difficult for Swinney given he has sat at the top table for almost 20 years now. The more pressure on the party over its financial affairs, the greater the impetus there will be among rank and file members for a new broom to clear out the cobwebs – and skeletons – that lurk in the upper echelons of the party. Swinney faces challenges from within his own party ranks Swinney is many things but he is not a stupid man. He knows the biggest threat facing his leadership now is not the opposition parties at Holyrood but those within his own ranks. Young, ambitious, power-hungry, impatient, self-assured, and plenty of other adjectives that might be used in lieu of saying the name out loud: Stephen Flynn. Flynn wants Swinney’s job. He has made the switch from Westminster to Holyrood and not because he wants to do a comparative study of reserved and devolved law-making. Flynn represents the next generation of the party. He is a millennial and plainly more in touch than Swinney with an age cohort that is markedly more pro-independence than its parents or grandparents but is beginning to question whether the SNP is the correct platform for constitutional change. Swinney’s future does not just depend on getting through the Murrell case and its wider fallout. There is also the question of the 2017 fundraiser launched on Sturgeon’s watch which raised £667,000 via a website called ref.scot. Arguably, this is a far more serious matter than Murrell’s embezzlement. A crime is a crime, but the independence fighting fund is about how parties extract cash from the public, their duty of candour or transparency in these activities and how such funds are spent. In their appeals for cash, the SNP said ‘money raised on ref.scot is ringfenced for the purpose stated on the website’. Under the heading ‘Donate’ a message read: ‘The success of our campaign will rely on ordinary people.’ A campaign, per the Cambridge Dictionary, is ‘a planned series of activities intended to achieve a particular aim’. Given the website was called ref.scot, and page after page talked about Scotland’s right to a referendum, a reasonable person could only construe that the ‘particular aim’ of this fundraiser was a second independence referendum. The campaign in question cannot have been the 2017 general election. As the SNP confirmed at the time, there was another fundraising operation for that: ‘Our general election appeal will pay for election campaign expenditure.’ As to the notion that the SNP is constitutionally a pro-independence party and therefore its day-to-day operations are all about achieving and winning another referendum, it’s a nice try but there’s a fatal flaw in this argument. That flaw is the word ‘ring-fenced’. If the SNP believed it was raising money that could be spent on day-to-day expenses or campaigning, on the grounds all its activities were geared towards winning a second referendum, why did it use the term ‘ring-fenced’? Again, words have meanings, and this one means ‘protected and only able to be used for a particular purpose’. Fighting for independence cannot be both the SNP’s all-encompassing raison d’etre and a particular purpose within the party’s operations. And if the party maintains otherwise, it will doubtless be able to support this proposition by disclosing receipts, invoices, and accounts detailing its separate streams of ring-fenced and non-ringfenced revenue and expenditure. The need for clarification is more, not less, urgent for Swinney’s admission last week that the money was ‘part of the resources that are available to the SNP to support its independence objectives’, with the First Minister adding that ‘the SNP is the party of independence and that’s what we campaign for’. Peter Murrell arriving at the High Court in Edinburgh The pro-independence blog Wings over Scotland has written to Police Scotland asking them to open a criminal investigation into these matters. The initial response received was not encouraging, with officers saying they ‘have been advised that the information provided had already been investigated as part of our inquiries and no further action will be taken at this time’. This is as unsustainable as it is unsatisfactory. Quite apart from the question of who has been ‘advising’ Police Scotland that fresh evidence needs no further investigation, there is the issue of how £667,000 collected for a ‘ring-fenced’ referendum fund can have been spent when there hasn’t been a referendum. If it is lawful for a political party to drum up cash for a stated objective then divert it to other purposes, it raises the question as to whether these arrangements apply in other sectors. In future, anyone arrested on suspicion of misappropriation of funds might be best using their one phone call not to contact a solicitor but to register their dubious enterprise with the Electoral Commission as a political party. Should demands be acceded to for a parliamentary inquiry into Murrell’s crimes and the SNP’s financial conduct more broadly, there will surely be additional calls from various quarters for Police Scotland to reassess their position on the referendum fund. For John Swinney, none of these developments will be welcome. His government is at risk of becoming paralysed for months and perhaps even years as parliamentarians and perhaps detectives trawl through party books. These would provide Flynn with highly favourable circumstances for bundling Swinney out the door and promising changes to restore public confidence in political fundraising. If events begin slipping in this direction, the First Minister stands little chance of regaining his footing. Flynn isn’t his only rival: time is against him too. After two decades at the top, he is unconvincing as a reformer and no one’s idea of the future. The SNP’s problems are not only financial but political: the money is spent and so is John Swinney. 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. 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