Why is the police probe into Nicola Sturgeon taking so long?

As Scots look ahead to the 2026 Holyrood election, support for the Scottish National Party continues to plummet. One scandal that the Nats won’t want looming over them when Scotland heads to the polls is Operation Branchform: the long-running police probe into the SNP’s funds and finances. Mr S can confirm that the investigation into the party – and its former first minister Nicola Sturgeon – is still ongoing, despite Scotland’s Crown Office receiving the latest Police Scotland report a two months ago. Talk about dragging it out.

Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, was charged with embezzlement of party funds this year, after an investigation was launched in 2021 into a ‘missing’ sum of £600,000 fundraised by for a second independence referendum campaign. Murrell was arrested alongside the party treasurer and the SNP’s former Dear Leader last year, after a police raid of both SNP HQ and the Glasgow home Sturgeon shared with Murrell – with officers lifting pots and pans, women’s razors and, er, a wheelbarrow from the former first minister’s house.