What happened to the SNP’s dodgy dossier?

In the final weeks before the 2014 Scottish referendum, the last independent Clydeside shipbuilder went bust. The SNP was boasting about ‘one of the world’s wealthiest nations’ going it alone, so when it went pop something had to be done. A millionaire adviser to Alex Salmond was lined up to buy it on the understanding that he’d bid for government contracts. A year later, a £100 million deal was struck to build two ferries.

That deal quickly ran aground. There was no sign of the ferries by 2018 and the bill had doubled to £200 million. It later emerged that the businessman, Jim McColl, had put in the most expensive out of the six bids to build the ferries – raising questions as to whether he’d been picked because the SNP owed him a favour. He now admits to being Salmond’s go-to man to save politically-important companies from bankruptcy, saying Salmond ‘approached me every time there was a company in trouble in Scotland’.