Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s former first minister who spearheaded an ongoing push for independence, was arrested as part of an investigation into the Scottish National Party’s finances months after she stepped down.
(Bloomberg) — Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s former first minister who spearheaded an ongoing push for independence, was arrested as part of an investigation into the Scottish National Party’s finances months after she stepped down.
Police Scotland confirmed her arrest. Separately, the force said a 52-year-old woman has been arrested on Sunday as a suspect in connection with the investigation into the funding and finances of the party. Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, who was the party’s chief executive, had previously been arrested in the probe.
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Officers have been looking into whether £600,000 ($754,000) in donations to the SNP to help the campaign for Scottish independence may have been used for other purposes. Sturgeon led the party and Scotland’s semi-autonomous government from late 2014 until her surprise resignation in February.
While the investigation is still unfolding and nobody has been charged with wrongdoing, Sturgeon’s arrest caps a period of turmoil for the SNP. It casts a shadow over a formidable figure whose party gripped Scottish politics on her watch and significantly influenced the outcome of UK elections.
She’s been one of Britain’s most popular politicians in recent years, challenging successive Conservative UK prime ministers over the era’s most totemic issues, from austerity measures to Brexit to the handling of the pandemic. Her departure came as she tried and failed to force the government in London to permit another referendum on independence.
The police investigation — and its dramatic fallout — has left her successor, Humza Yousaf, struggling to unite the SNP after a divisive leadership contest. His ability to get the party back on track will be tested at the next general election.
In a speech to the Scottish Parliament on April 18, Yousaf set out what he called a “fresh start” focused on reducing poverty, supporting business and harnessing the opportunities of net-zero green polities to boost the economy.
According to John Curtice, a politics professor at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, the SNP’s travails could benefit the UK’s main opposition Labour Party as it tries to claw back popularity in Scotland and oust Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Tories in a general election due by January 2025.
In 2019, when Conservative leader Boris Johnson won a majority in Westminster, the SNP took 48 of Scotland’s 59 districts. The SNP, the third-largest party in the UK House of Commons, still had a significant poll lead in Scotland after Sturgeon’s resignation and the investigation become public. A Survation survey taken March 29 through April 3 put the SNP at least eight points ahead of Labour, based on voting intentions for the UK election.
The SNP has weathered scandal before. In March 2021, Sturgeon was embroiled in a bitter dispute with her predecessor and former mentor, Alex Salmond, over the handling of sexual harassment allegations and whether she broke the ministerial code. She went on to win big again in Scottish parliamentary elections two months later, and used that mandate to reinforce her push for an independence referendum.
–With assistance from Tiago Ramos Alfaro and Colin Keatinge.
(Updates throughout.)
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