Post #2868198

https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/comment/every-aspect-peter-murrell-scandal-37203841 Almost as jaw-dropping as the litany of luxury goods he snaffled was the reaction to his guilty plea from his ex-wife Nicola Sturgeon. The former First Minister wants us to believe that she never suspected a thing, despite vast sums of the stolen cash being used to feather the marital nest she shared with him. Did she never stop to ask her husband whether, or how, they could afford the new cars – never mind that £125,000 motorhome parked on his mother’s driveway? This is Nicola Sturgeon, the supposed master of detail, not some naïve dafty. Together, she and Murrell had a vice-like grip over the SNP for years. They controlled their party from top to bottom. Those who stepped out of line were quickly dispatched and buried in the political equivalent of a shallow grave. John Swinney was sometimes the trigger man. Other times, he dug the hole. Did it never once dawn on Sturgeon to seek out a bank statement or a credit card bill to see how the family finances were bearing up as the luxury goodies were stockpiling? From the Salmond inquiry to the ferries corruption and, at Sturgeon and Swinney’s orchestration, the deletion of Covid WhatsApps … who could trust anything from this toxic party? It’s hard to believe Operation Branchform would have lasted so long, or cost so much, if everyone in the party had co-operated with the investigation from the off. Remember when Murrell’s mouthy successor as SNP chief exec sneeringly boasted that no-one would be charged – in what appeared to be an attempt to lean on the police? As my party’s former justice spokesman and a journalist who spent years fighting for crime victims, I know how glacial and self-serving Scotland’s justice system is.