More keeps pouring out about the Scottish National party’s culture of secrecy. As revealed by the Times today, deputy leader Keith Brown suggested in 2021, four months after the police investigation into party finances – Operation Branchform – had commenced, that the SNP should produce a monthly summary of income and expenditure. Two key figures, Douglas Chapman and Joanna Cherry, had already resigned from their posts over concerns about party transparency, while several members of the finance committee had also quit. Yet Peter Murrell, chief executive of the SNP, shut down Brown’s plans.
Brown compiled a 40-page transparency report for the party which concluded: ‘It is imperative that the workings and decisions of the party are transparent and accessible.’ The report suggested the creation of a new and improved finance, audit and risk committee, while calling for more information to allow the treasurer to ‘plan accordingly’ and make ‘cash flow projections’. The deputy leader’s report also considered the publication of staff pay scales and requested more clarity on how fundraised money was spent. But none of Brown’s key recommendations have been put into action.
There are questions over how democratic the party’s decision-making has been. A party source told the Times that both Murrell and Kirsten Oswald MP, who was appointed business convenor by Sturgeon, were opposed to Brown’s plans. The source said: ‘Mike Russell [the SNP president] was supportive so the elected party president and the elected deputy leader [Brown] lost to the unelected Murrell and Oswald.’
‘Good governance’ – a phrase so often employed by all three candidates during the leadership contest – appears to have been very much lacking. Former SNP MP Roger Mullin has separately described ‘a failure of transparency where senior members of staff and a few others refused to reveal information that would assist good governance’, while the First Minister distanced himself from his predecessor on Thursday, saying he was ‘very, very clear that the governance of the party was not as it should be’ and that ‘a review of transparency…is clearly needed’.
This week has seen the arrest of the SNP’s former chief executive (who has since been released without charge pending further investigation) which Yousaf admitted was ‘not great’ for trust in the party. Only days later it was found that the accountancy firm the party used to audit its finances had resigned after reviewing its clients, though this is understood to have taken place prior to Murrell’s arrest.
Can Humza Yousaf successfully navigate the party away from the events of recent weeks? Party president Mike Russell sounded defeated in an interview with the Herald: ‘I’ll do as much as I can, but it’s true that the last few weeks have been pretty wearing. Like it or not, the party has chosen Humza to do this and I want to help him as much as I can. Parties and institutions are fallible.‘
There is a new kind of desperation taking hold as Russell went on to imply there could be a future in working with Alex Salmond’s Alba party: ‘If we could find some means by which we could have a positive dialogue based on mutual respect [with Alba], [working with them] would still be difficult but it would be entirely possible.’
There is a growing belief that Yousaf simply cannot be the person to lead the SNP into a new era, that a cleaner break from the ‘Old Guard’ is now imperative. While there remains substantial support for independence across Scotland, for many it is starting to look like there is simply no way back for the SNP as we know it. A radical overhaul may be the only viable survival mechanism for the party.
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