The SNP fraud probe has gone on far too long

So here’s a thing. Last week a prominent defence lawyer broke ranks and declared that the police investigation into alleged misuse of SNP party funds – Operation Branchform – had been going on too long and should be wound up pronto. Scottish criminal defence lawyer Thomas Leonard Ross KC told Sky News the probe ‘cannot go on indefinitely’. ‘Once somebody is charged then they have the right to a trial within a reasonable time,’ he said.

Many Scottish politicians have been saying this privately too – not all of them nationalists. Then, by a remarkable coincidence, the Sunday Mail revealed exclusively this weekend that ‘prosecutors investigating SNP fraud allegations are examining evidence that a fake firm received payments for refurbishment work carried out on the party’s headquarters’. 

Here we go again. This is a brand new twist to the longest-running true-crime mystery in British politics.