Just what Humza needed on the day of his Big Speech to Holyrood: another arrest in what has inevitably been called the ‘campervangate’ affair. This time it was the party treasurer, Colin Beattie, who was taken into police custody this morning. The 71-year-old has now been released without charge, pending further investigation. It is the latest stage in the two year long police investigation (Operation Branchform) into what happened to that now infamous £600,000 sum for a referendum campaign that never happened. Earlier this month, the former SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, was arrested and released without charge – pending further investigation – in what Police Scotland say is an ‘ongoing investigation’.
Colin Beattie, MSP for Midlothian North and Musselburgh, had been treasurer for the SNP for 16 years until 2020 when he lost out to MP Douglas Chapman. But in 2021, he took over from the Chapman when the latter resigned only seven months into the job after claiming he was being denied ‘the financial information to carry out the fiduciary duties of the National Treasurer’.
The sight of the party treasurer being taken into police custody is another blow to the party’s image and to the standing of Nicola Sturgeon’s successor, Humza Yousaf
On Saturday, Beattie reportedly told the SNP’s National Executive Committee meeting he was ‘having difficulty in balancing the books due to the reduction in membership and donors’. He was contradicted the very next morning by the former Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, who insisted that the party’s finances are ‘in robust health’ and that the SNP can meet all its financial obligations. Make of that what you will.
As always the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal’s Office have sounded the contempt siren and warned anyone who comments on Beattie’s arrest, or on the police investigation, risks two years imprisonment or an unlimited fine. However, this train of events is having a very serious political impact. We are not supposed to comment on criminal investigations in case they prejudice the jury the outcome of a trial, but the succession of arrests has already arguably prejudiced the public against the Scottish National party and its former leader, Nicola Sturgeon. As Professor Sir John Curtice, our leading polling expert, pointed out on BBC radio last week after the police erected that forensics tent and surrounded Nicola Sturgeon’s home with police cars, ‘these pictures make it very difficult for Yousaf to establish himself in the minds of the public as a leader they want to follow’.
The sight of the party treasurer being taken into police custody is another blow to the party’s image and to the standing of Nicola Sturgeon’s successor, Humza Yousaf. How he wishes he had never let it be said that he is the ‘continuity candidate’. Today he was going to set out his priorities for government; it was to be the moment he drew a line under the succession of bad news stories afflicting the party and outlined his vision of a ‘progressive Scotland’ and a ‘wellbeing economy’. Well he can forget that: tomorrow’s media will be all about the police arresting another SNP official and about the ‘missing’ £600,000. No one has suggested any wrongdoing on Mr Beattie’s side.
Yousaf has already had to contend with demands that Nicola Sturgeon be suspended and – or – forced to resign her seat. He said yesterday that the former SNP leader should not be suspended adding: ‘We are far past the time of judging what a woman does based on what happens to her husband.’ This is true – but the SNP has been only too willing in the past to suspend politicians and officials when there is the slightest hint of wrong doing or questions about their character.
Critics will cite the suspension of the former children’s minister Mark McDonald in 2017 when he was accused of sending inappropriate texts, and the MSP Michelle Thomson in 2015 when police investigated her property deals. No action was taken but Thomson has only recently been able to restart her career and McDonald never did. The SNP is certainly guilty perhaps of double standards in not giving the same treatment to Sturgeon – but at the same time, two wrongs do not make a right.
People, especially in politics, love to see the powerful humbled, and everyone has been hugely excited by the implosion of the once dominant force in Scottish politics. Like everyone else involved in this most bizarre criminal investigation, however, Nicola Sturgeon also has a right to natural justice. That leaked video of her insisting there was no problem with the party finances back in 2021 is not incriminating in any obvious way – it’s what you would expect the party leader to tell the National Executive Committee. Yet it has somehow been presented as proof positive of a cover up.
Today’s speech was underwhelming: we remain none the wiser about exactly how Humza’s ‘wellbeing economy’ differs from the economy the rest of us live and work in. Nor did we learn how he intends to end poverty in Scotland, his number one priority. Yousaf announced a delay on the much-criticised deposit return scheme for bottles and cans but gave no indication about how it can be made to work. The ban on alochol advertising has been binned for the time being – at least in favour of a ‘fresh look’ – and the First Minister confirmed that that Scotland will be returning to international league tables of school performance but gave no commitments on closing the educational attainment gap.
There is indeed nothing in this ‘fresh start’ but putting off till tomorrow what the new First Minister could be doing today. Perhaps he has already realised what many believe: that he’s a here-today-gone-tomorrow leader of a government on its last legs. At any rate there was nothing in the speech likely to eclipse the financial scandal consuming the SNP and his administration. That he had to deny to reporters that the SNP is a ‘criminal’ organisation speaks volumes about the state of the party he leads.
Sturgeon has declined to come to Holyrood this week and she watched Humza Yousaf’s big speech remotely. But she is rapidly spinning out of the world of active politics altogether because of the succession of arrests of individuals close to her when she was leader. There is, to repeat, no evidence of any wrong-doing, and no one has been charged in Operation Branchform. But this police investigation into the party finances, as it grinds on and on, is chewing up Sturgeon’s reputation and the authority of the First Minister who replaced her.
The SNP, meanwhile, has been hit by the political equivalent of a force ten hurricane and there is absolutely nothing it can do about it.
