Why is the police’s SNP probe taking so long?

Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has plenty to worry about right now with the imminent implementation of his much-criticised Hate Crime crackdown. But there is mounting anxiety within the SNP about something else: the progress, or lack of it, of the police probe into the party’s finances.

It is nearly a year now since Nicola Sturgeon’s home was raided by police, as part of Operation Branchform, their investigation into what happened to £660,000 of donations for a referendum campaign that never took place. The nation was agog last April as stony-faced officers descended on the former first minister’s home and put up that blue forensics tent. Sturgeon was later arrested and then released without charge, as were her husband, the ex-SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, and former party treasurer, Colin Beattie. All deny wrongdoing. But, as the affair drags on, it is all but impossible for the SNP to move on.