Iain Macwhirter Iain Macwhirter

Scotland awaits the fate of the Third Woman

(Getty)

Scottish politics has never been more febrile. If we go a day without an arrest, a resignation, a revelation about financial mismanagement in the Scottish National Party we wonder what we’ve missed. It’s probably a little like this after a coup or in a failing Latin American state. Okay, there are no tanks rumbling along Sauchiehall St., but the political and media worlds have been holding their collective breath waiting to see if the former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, will be arrested by police. Newspapers have their profiles ready to run. So far she has avoided the long hand of the law.

Why is everyone expecting this hitherto blameless politician, this icon of progressive feminism, to be taken into police custody? Well, Sturgeon’s is the third name on the SNP’s now infamous 2020/21 financial accounts along with her husband, then party chief executive Peter Murrell, and the then National Treasurer, Colin Beattie.

Written by
Iain Macwhirter

Iain Macwhirter is a former BBC TV presenter and was political commentator for The Herald between 1999 and 2022. He is an author of Road to Referendum and Disunited Kingdom: How Westminster Won a Referendum but Lost Scotland.

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