Quiet anger is building across Scotland at how Nicola Sturgeon is being treated

One year on from Sturgeon's arrest lack of transparency in the legal process causing distrust

Photo by Gillian Robertson

A Radio Four panel show visited Scotland this week - the Scottish Parliament, the host quipped, can’t hold a candle to the pomp and ceremony of Westminster but it has introduced some traditions of its own - the ritual arrest of the First Minister. This line may have killed the self-selected audience at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre - but it died in my kitchen.  

There has been a lot of this recently - TV presenters curl their lips disdainfully when they ask if Nicola Sturgeon is going to assist in the SNP’s election campaign. Can she really be an asset? You bet she can.

Personally, I think the party should show more gumption and bring out Nicola in her tartan high heels. I would like to see a little more pride and pushback against the metropolitan sneering.

It is a year today since Nicola Sturgeon was arrested in the investigation into the SNP finances. I have written elsewhere that the SNP viewed as a financial organisation is small, about the size of medium hotel. Sturgeon’s role in the accounts was tangential. it is odd that it has not been concluded especially as this delay impinges on the democratic process. Former Scotsman editor Magnus Linklater wrote a column in the Times last week entitled “Why Scotland is losing faith in its legal system” 

Linklater wrote: “We watch the long drawn-out progress of Operation Branchform, investigating the SNP finances, and wonder at the inability of crown prosecutors to charge or exonerate a former first minister. Could politics somehow be at work? Everyone denies it, of course, but because the prosecutor-in-chief — the lord advocate, Dorothy Bain — has “recused” herself from the case, arguing a possible conflict of interest, we have little idea who is weighing the evidence, and why they are taking so long about it.” He concluded: “We know very little about decision-making at the heart of our prosecution service.”

Police Scotland is a behemoth. It was formed by amalgamating eight police forces and it is the largest in the UK outside London, way beyond the influence of councillors or other local politicians. Is it dealing with this case alone or is the UK Serious Fraud Office involved? I don’t know because they refuse to comment. Who has the authority to oversee this process? Not the Scottish Police Authority - I contacted them and they said they have no role in operational matters. Police Scotland are notionally independent of the prosecution service so it is not clear, especially now that Bain has stepped aside, if there is anybody at all in in Scotland who is able to scrutinise the conduct of this affair.  

I detect a quiet anger growing about this which is not really making its way into the mainstream media. Nicola has a lot of fans. Many were grateful to have her steady hand on the tiller during Covid.  I was a lockdown sceptic but most of my friends and family were not. They did everything that was asked of them, not because they were worried about being fined or because it was the law, but because they viewed it as a communitarian effort. They made sacrifices, some small, some big, some huge, in order to protect the most vulnerable among us. 

Nicola was unwavering in her commitment to lockdown  - she obviously sincerely believed it was a worthwhile endeavour. It seems now that the government in Westminster didn’t feel the same - they had been bounced into it against their better judgement and that became evident eventually. When the Queen sat alone at her husband’s funeral, obeying the regulations, oor Nic wasn’t the UK leader nursing a hangover from an illegal party the night before. 

I personally will always be grateful to Nicola Sturgeon because of the reassurance my immunocom[rpmised mother took from her calm and dedication and the patience she showed in explaining the reasoning behind difficult decisions at that time.

People say the public are fickle but my friends, mostly women of a certain age, are not. They were proud of Nicola’s leadership then and they have not changed their opinion of her now. Concern is growing about how she is being treated, by an opaque state which offers no transparency, no accountability and seemingly a willingness to drag out this odd case so that it impinges on a general election campaign. 

We are hearing the word ‘lawfare’ in relation to politicised prosecutions in the US. When the 34 guilty verdicts came through on the Orange One, I got an alert on my phone while I stood at the bar, waiting for a pint of Orkney Best for an old friend and a Black Bottle for myself. I proposed a toast when I took the drinks over to our table - but she only shuddered, saying she feared it was bad news which would energise his base. You don’t have to be a SUV-driving Republican redneck to see the case against Trump looks politically motivated - an article in the New Statsman argued that last week. So will conviction make Trump less likely to be elected - or does it risk a backlash? 

And what about here in Scotland? Is this drawn-out investigation a British version of lawfare? Does anyone believe that Nicola Sturgeon, who returned a portion of her salary to the public coffers every year, was stealing from the independence movement? I don’t think so. It’s absurd.  

John  Swinney said that she would be helping on the campaign trail but we haven’t seen that so far. There are still three weeks to go - Special Operation Branch Form should be put to one side, Scotland should stop allowing it to cast a shadow and welcome Nicola Sturgeon back into public life.