Inside the SNP’s growing civil war

Peter Murrell is the most powerful man in Scotland but almost no one has heard of him. The SNP chief executive shuns the spotlight but he is one half of Scotland’s ruling class: he is the husband of Nicola Sturgeon.

The Sturgeon-Murrell reign has gone largely unchallenged in the ultra-disciplined SNP — but that is changing. The Sunday Times reports that party activists are plotting a vote of no confidence in Murrell at the next SNP conference. The move stems from one of those intricate vendettas in which Scottish politics and the Sicilian mafia specialise. Lanarkshire Labour never went away, it just rebranded with a saltire.

The four families of this drama are the Sturgeonistas, the Salmondites, the Wokes and the Sensibles, and although some belong to more than one outfit, all are soldiers in the two main feuds that divide the SNP today.

The primary axis is the Sturgeonistas versus the Salmondites.