On Saturday, former Scotland first minister Nicola Sturgeon, who stepped down in March, told her Instagram followers she had just passed her driving theory test with a perfect score. The next morning, her political reputation crashed into a brick wall. The shock wave will reverberate through Scottish politics for a long time to come.
It is difficult to underestimate the enormity of the impact on Sturgeon’s political image of her arrest by police examining allegations of financial impropriety at the Scottish National Party (SNP). She was released without charge pending further investigation and says she is “innocent of any wrongdoing”.
Regardless of her protestations, her seven-hour detention on Sunday, and the arrest in the same investigation two months ago of her husband, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, has obliterated the aura of invincibility Sturgeon built up over two decades at the top of Scottish politics.
Police are continuing with their criminal investigation into the whereabouts of £660,000 in party donations that have yet to be accounted for.
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Meanwhile, the ramifications for the SNP, the party she led from 2014 until she suddenly quit earlier this year, are less clear cut. Sturgeon’s arrest is likely to deepen the divisions within the party that were exposed during the leadership contest to replace her.
The impact on voters is less predictable.
The SNP has utterly dominated Scottish politics since winning a majority in the devolved parliament in 2007. Now, after Sturgeon’s legal difficulties and a series of political missteps, Labour senses an opportunity to strike. While the SNP is a big target, it is also a big beast for Labour to fell.
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The latest Ipsos polling shows a 10 per cent drop in the SNP’s support in recent months, but it still has the support of about 40 per cent of the Scottish electorate. Labour is second on 29 per cent. The Conservatives are way adrift on 17 per cent, well down on their position in 2019 when a Boris Johnson surge lifted the party’s standing. Scotland is now a straight SNP versus Labour battle for next year’s Westminster elections.
John Curtice, the University of Strathclyde professor who is the guru of British political polling, believes Sturgeon’s arrest won’t cause a collapse in the party’s support. But he does predict that it will make it difficult for the SNP and its new leader, Sturgeon acolyte Humza Yousaf, to regain the ground it has lost in the recent turmoil.
The implication of that is that a Labour surge in the Westminster elections now appears to be baked in. More than 20 of the SNP’s 45 seats are believed to be at risk. If the result is even worse, Yousaf’s nascent position may even come under threat. A looming byelection in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, where SNP MP Margaret Ferrier faces a recall petition over her suspension for flouting Covid rules, will give an early indication of the strength and depth of the expected Labour surge.
Recent polls have also revealed a decoupling in the trajectory of the support for the SNP and its cherished central aim, namely independence for Scotland. As the SNP’s numbers decline, support for independence among Scottish voters remains steady at close to 50 per cent, consistently slightly above the 45 per cent that voted to break away in the last referendum in 2014.
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While Sturgeon’s travails capture the headlines, a more politically significant issue for Yousaf lies in the fact that his party has no clear strategy for its core aim of securing independence. Nationalists and SNP supporters may just about stomach the apparent downfall of their spiritual leader, Sturgeon, but they won’t tolerate any slippage in the pursuit of their Holy Grail, a breakaway Scotland.
The UK supreme court has shut down its latest bid for a new referendum. A party think-in is due to be held later this month to discuss a new strategy, which would then be formally adopted.
Former SNP leader Alba Party leader Alex Salmond has offered Yousaf an electoral pact to protect nationalist seats at the Westminster elections next year, with the aim of returning a coalition of pro-independence parties to London to agitate for a fresh referendum from the UK government.
Yousaf dismissed the idea on Sunday. If he has a better idea, he will have to propose it soon.