Update, 5.59pm: Natalie McGarry has now resigned the SNP whip over the campaign fund probe.
First there were 56. Then there were 55. Pretty soon it seems entirely possible there will be only 54. SNP MPs, that is.
Natalie McGarry, the 34 year old MP for Glasgow East, is the latest (that is, second) member of the SNP’s record-breaking 2015 intake to be in discussions with the police.
Ms McGarry was a leading member of Women for Independence, one of the plethora of independent campaigning organisations agitating for a Yes vote during last year’s referendum campaign.
Unfortunately, it seems as though a substantial amount of money, believed to be in the region of £30,000, has gone missing. Ms McGarry is reported to have been the sole person with access to the Paypal account used to collect contributions to WFI’s finances.
Yesterday, it was confirmed that WFI’s board had reported the matter to the police. Ms McGarry shuttered her Twitter account – apparently because the social network has become an uncommonly unpleasant place in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut – and has engaged the solicitor Aamer Anwar to represent her interests. Mr Anwar also represents Michelle Thomson, the MP for Edinburgh West currently suspended from the SNP pending the outcome of a police investigation into alleged misconduct in her property dealings.
It is all very embarrassing and one need not be a Nat (of any sort) to feel some sympathy for the other members of WFI for whom reporting these ‘discrepancies’ to the police must have been a ticklishly delicate decision to make. That is, they knew how awful it would look – and not just look but actually be – and they had to do it anyway.
No wonder Labour and the Tories are calling for Ms McGarry’s suspension from the SNP group at Westminster. No wonder they are seeking to create a ‘narrative’ of SNP ‘sleaze’. The new politics, it turns out, is just the same as the old politics. Who knew?
There was always an element of kidology about the status of these independent groups campaigning for a Yes vote. They were, as they always said, not the same as the SNP. It’s just that seven members of the WFI board are now SNP candidates for next year’s Scottish parliament elections. This should not be considered a surprise or even any great scandal. It is only what it is. When it came to selecting candidates for 2016, who better than those with an obvious commitment to the cause and, importantly, some experience of campaigning too?
It may be there is a simple and innocent explanation for WFI’s missing funds. Let us hope that proves to be the case. Awkwardly, however, it seems that if there is such an innocent explanation it is not one WFI have been able to find themselves.
Hitherto, Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership of the SNP has been largely trouble-free. Even when pressed on policy shortcomings or suboptimal outcomes in areas for which she has responsibility, she has been able to deploy a trump card: Look at the polls, loser.
And it is true that the SNP remains unassailable. Give or take the standard margin for error, 50 percent of Scottish voters are minded to vote for the nationalists next May. Part of that supremacy is built on the lack of any plausible alternative government-in-waiting and part of it reflects the iron logic of the independence referendum. (If you voted Yes, why would you then vote for a Unionist party?) But part of it also reflects the general suspicion that the SNP are going to win anyway and, this being the case, you might as well get with the programme.
Now an SNP victory next May remains inevitable even if there is a difference between the party winning the largest number of seats and gaining a second overall majority. The opposition’s hopes rest on preventing the latter even if, unavoidably, that would likely leave the SNP dependent upon support from the Green party to pass its budget.
Hence, then, the need to persuade people that the SNP are no better than anyone else and just as prone to misadventure, stupidity and even, perhaps, the occasional piece of creative accounting. Mud, as everyone knows, has a habit of sticking and so the opposition’s first task in Scotland, these days, is to strip away the SNP’s Teflon coating.
That’s easier said than done and there is a sense in which, of course, the difficulties of Ms McGarry and Ms Thomson are hardly Ms Sturgeon’s fault. Nevertheless, in the absence of a credible counter-narrative from Labour, dragging the SNP into a mire remains Labour’s best option. Hence the doggedness with which they will gnaw on this bone.
I doubt it will be enough but I can’t blame Labour for trying. If you cannot inspire confidence or enthusiasm yourself you can at least try and diminish the enthusiasm voters might feel for your opponents.
Meanwhile, given that the SNP are the most sanctimonious party in British politics these days, non-aligned observers will enjoy the sight of the biter bit. If nothing else the newly-designed tartan honouring The 56 may need a new name.
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