What a Lords probe into the Murrell affair tells us about the SNP and a lack of accountability in Scottish public life

By GRAHAM GRANT, SCOTTISH HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR Published: 17:03, 10 August 2026 | Updated: 17:03, 10 August 2026 For many years, the SNP has lobbied for the abolition of the hated House of Lords – a symbol of colonial oppression. Now its own affairs may be about to be investigated by peers in a humiliation that would prove politically devastating. As we revealed yesterday, members of the Lords are gearing up for an inquiry into the scandal over embezzler Peter Murrell. The former SNP chief executive robbed his party blind for 12 years while married to its leader, Nicola Sturgeon, who says she had no grounds for suspicion – and is now flogging her memoir on the back of the controversy. There is a grim irony about this awkward situation for John Swinney, though it’s also a bit tricky for Anas Sarwar. The erstwhile Scottish Labour leader is a peer, and a UK Government minister, though naturally he says he wants to scrap the Lords. It’s fashionable to call for it to be ditched – but it’s striking that the second chamber is the only one seemingly willing and able to launch a probe into Murrellgate. In exasperated tones, one senior crossbench peer told me: ‘Something must be done to clear the matter up - it does no good to have it hanging over everyone’s head.’ While the Scottish Parliament has rejected an inquiry into the Peter Murrell affair, the Lords may be set to launch their own probe They did not want to be named in case they were drafted in to lead the probe, or take part in it, illustrating how seriously the idea is being taken. When Holyrood fails to step up to the mark, as it has so many times in the past, other parts of the UK legislature are expected to fill the void. Don’t forget that MPs on the Scottish Affairs Committee in the Commons are also mulling over the possibility of a Murrellgate inquiry. At the Scottish parliament, you may remember Mr Swinney put the kibosh on any notion of a closer look at the Murrell farrago, backed up by his allies in the Scottish Greens. This grubby stitch-up deprived voters of the chance to find out how a powerful figure was able to raid the SNP’s coffers, apparently without the knowledge of his other half, for more than a decade – to the tune of more than £400,000. Signing off on his own expenses, Murrell’s brazen though not particularly sophisticated fraud continued even after the police started to look at the books, kicking off a gruelling investigation which has cost taxpayers more than £3million. The question of whether this pound-shop Bernie Madoff pilfered taxpayers’ money has yet to be adequately resolved, though we’re told most of it came from members’ cash. Then there’s the £660,000 referendum fighting fund that supporters were assured would be ring-fenced, but which the SNP now accepts was instead used for ‘ongoing activities’. Police and prosecutors decided that on its own it didn’t constitute a crime, though it was the catalyst for the broader probe into Murrell’s nefarious activities which included the purchase of a £124,000 motorhome. It wasn’t just any motorhome because this one appeared to have an invisibility shield, meaning Ms Sturgeon didn’t see it when she visited her mother-in-law’s home in Fife, where it was parked. Meanwhile, overworked detectives are assessing claims that £1.5million went ‘missing’ from the official Yes campaign for independence a decade ago. The constant refrain from the SNP and its useful idiots in the Greens is that there’s nothing to see here and it’s time to move on. It shames Holyrood that peers are now prepared to intervene and make sure we get to the bottom of these scandals. Murrell is now behind bars while his estranged wife tries to sell her amusingly titled memoir Frankly, complete with a new foreword in which she lays into her old consigliere, Mr Swinney, sparking a fresh bout of civil war in a party previously known for its iron-clad discipline. A figure of ridicule, she’s on the literary circuit and no doubt her publicists are hoping the Murrell furore will push up sales figures. When the first edition was published, Murrell had yet to admit his guilt and Ms Sturgeon couldn’t say much about the case for fear of being held in contempt of court. That said, she won’t publish the written statement she made to Operation Branchform cops, despite the absence of any legal barrier, so we’re left to guess its contents – though we do know that officers felt it didn’t address all of the questions they had. Back in January, I wrote that Ms Sturgeon ‘may well become the backseat driver from hell’ for Mr Swinney – a prediction which turned out to be on the money, and may yet prove to be an understatement. In the latest edition of her memoir, Ms Sturgeon attacks Mr Swinney for his lack of ‘vision or big-picture thinking’ but praises the Greens for ‘injecting a sense of hope’ into the Holyrood election campaign. Bear in mind that Green MSP Q Manivannan is at the centre of a growing row after claiming there is a ‘spectrum’ of rape offences, and that there is a ‘demonisation’ of rape in society. Many rape victims might be inclined to view those sick comments as something other than an injection of hope. As for ‘big-picture thinking’, you might struggle to remember much of that during the Sturgeon era, blighted as it was by the debacle over botched transgender reforms and her failure to close the pupil attainment gap in schools. Even Ms Sturgeon’s ex-chief of staff, Liz Lloyd, is appalled at her former boss’s critical comments about the current SNP regime, claiming that Ms Sturgeon may be respected within the SNP – but Mr Swinney is loved. Both of these statements are debatable, given that the former First Minister is now straightforwardly a laughing stock, both inside the party and beyond. But they show that Ms Sturgeon casts a long shadow – just like Murrellgate. Nicola Sturgeon is now promoting her book, Frankly. The latest edition contains a new foreword in which she attacks John Swinney's leadership Mr Swinney cannot hope to escape it until he is prepared to grapple with its fallout – but the chances of this are minuscule. He and his top team have their heads buried firmly in the sand but it’s far from a good look for a nationalist party to rely on a London-based institution it despises to clean up the mess it made. Yet this isn’t really about the Lords – it’s about Holyrood’s shortcomings. And if it takes peers in the very chamber the SNP wants abolished to achieve that, MSPs should reflect on what that says about their parliament. The fact that another legislature may be about to launch an inquiry illustrates a vacuum of accountability in Scotland’s devolved institutions. We don’t need endless political theatre – or yet more constitutional point-scoring. What we need is confidence that power is being properly examined and those responsible are held accountable. Until the questions surrounding Murrellgate are fully addressed, the stain on our public life will remain.