Calling Time on Operation Branchform

Why should Scotland's leading female poltician have her reputation traduced?

Nicola Sturgeon - from the Scottish Political Archive, Stirling Uni

International Women’s Day seems a good opportunity to say that Operation Branchform - the investigation into the SNP finances which involved the arrest and humiliation of Nicola Sturgeon -  has dragged on too long. If it is not concluded before the general election campaign begins in earnest, it runs the risk of bringing the police, and Scottish justice, into disrepute. 

Why should Scotland’s leading female politician of her generation, a dedicated public servant from a working-class background who led her country conscientiously through the pandemic, have her reputation traduced in this way? It is almost a year since her arrest. 

At the Conservatives’ recent Scottish conference, the UK’s government’s representative in Scotland Alister Jack made snide references in his speech to ‘forensic tents’ and ‘mobile homes’ when talking about Sturgeon, clearly implying that she has been guilty of dishonesty. He and his ilk have a free pass to do that while the operation is ongoing - and they have done it a lot over the past year. 

This is not a complex fraud case involving a multinational company with offices in many countries and billions of dollars in revenue. The SNP - in business terms - is a minnow. Its revenue was just over £4million last year; it employs a bit more than 100 people. It is about the same size as a small hotel or a golf club. For comparison, the UK charity the RSPB employs more than 2,000 people and it has revenues of £157 million a year. The Old Course Hotel and Golf Resort in St Andrews employs more than 200 people and has a revenue of about £18 million. 

The audit cost for a business the size of the SNP will be of the order of a few thousand pounds a year whereas the audit cost of a big multinational would be in the order of hundreds of millions a year. That’s why it can be hard for a political party like the SNP to find an auditor - it is not very lucrative work with a public profile that doesn’t match the size of the bill. But the different price reflects the amount of work that is considered to be necessary. Not very much in the scheme of things. It is fairly straightforward to look into the accounts of that scale of operation. An investigation into a big financial business could easily take years - but the wee hotel down the road? Not so much. 

The original investigation into the SNP was called - three years ago - on the strength of a complaint about £600,000 donations for a new independence referendum. The donations were not ringfenced and were instead apparently put towards campaigning for the Holyrood election - in which, the SNP would argue, victory was a necessary step on the road to a new referendum. 

The investigation has now cost more than twice the disputed sum at around £1.2 million. It has expanded from the original complaint into a comprehensive examination of every cost that has been claimed against revenue. Are you self-employed? Do you run a business? Can you prove that every post-it note from the pack you bought in 2019 was used for legitimate purposes? What about the Bics and the Sudoku book you bought when your train was delayed in 2017? Were they really necessary for the business?

The public can only assume that this is the territory where Operation Branchform now finds itself. They have written to office workers employed by the SNP saying they are to be interviewed for a fourth time. At some point, this stops looking less like a legitimate investigation and more like politically motivated harassment.

What is the role of the UK government in this process? Is the Scottish Office involved? Could it be Malcolm Offord who is advising Operation Branch Form? He is an experienced propagandist - he was the director of Acanchi, a PR firm, that set up what purported to be a “grassroots” No campaign group in 2014, called “Vote No Borders”. They made a glossy propaganda video that was shown extensively on the BBC in the run up to the 2014 referendum as a news item. Acanchi also made scare videos for the cinema using the name “Vote No Borders” - which did not exist as a real group. Offord donated to the Conservative Party and to Michael Gove’s personal election expenses. He was then awarded a permanent seat at Westminster by Boris Johnson and now is a central figure in the UK’s government of Scotland. Is Offord the man behind Operation Branchform?

There were hopes that the relatively new Chief Constable, Jo Farrell, who took over the Police Scotland force last year would deal with this - or at least make a statement about how the operation is progressing. But she has been in post six months and has said nothing. 

Last year senior legal figures Kevin Drummond KC and Douglas Cusine raised concerns about the investigation. They told the Times: “The investigation in this case appears to be taking such a protracted period of time, that some explanation should be offered by the Crown.”  Their polite request has been ignored - but it has not gone unnoticed.