We know what former SNP chief Peter Murrell bought with £400,000 of embezzled funds. What I’d like to know is why | Gaby Hinsliff

His guilty plea means motive will for ever be a mystery. It just proves that the world can look as hard as it likes at someone’s marriage and never know what’s going on

It sounds like the haul of an unhappy trophy wife, filling her empty days with retail therapy. Three Fortnum & Mason advent calendars, seemingly priced for those to whom money is no object; a pair of incomprehensibly expensive Lalique crystal salt and pepper grinders; several hundreds of pounds’ worth of Le Creuset; and no fewer than six Nintendos.

But these aren’t the contents of some influencer’s shopping bags. Rather it’s part of the charge sheet against Peter Murrell, former Scottish National party (SNP) chief executive and estranged husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, who pleaded guilty this week to slowly embezzling more than £400,000 from the party to which they both devoted their lives and blowing much of it on designer luxuries. What we may never know is why.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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