At the behest of Tory MP Andrew Six Chips Bowie, Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee is to vote next week on whether to hold an inquiry into the finances of the SNP. Bowie is of course only interested in good governance and looking after the best interests of the SNP members whose money was stolen by Peter Murrell, and if you believe that, you probably also believe that the crypto-currency billionaires who showered millions on Reform UK and the corporate donors who gave millions to Labour and the Conservatives did so purely out of the kindness of their cold dead hearts seeking absolutely nothing by way of return. It is instructive that the party the Scottish Affairs Committee whose finances the Scottish Affairs Committee has chosen to consider holding an inquiry into is the only party with Scottish MPs which does not suck on the teat of corporate donors and dark money and which is almost entirely funded by its own members.
Bowie’s proposal is of course nothing more than a nakedly partisan attempt to continue to milk the Murrell scandal for party political advantage. As such it represents an unprecedented Trumpian attempt to weaponise the power of the state to attack and damage an opposition political party. In fact, it’s worse than that, not even Trump has gone so far in his attacks on the Democrats.
There is absolutely no evidence that any public money was embezzled by Murrell, and if any had been taken then it will be recovered. Murrell’s lawyers have promised the full repayment of the stolen money as part of a plea deal in a bid to reduce his sentence. This is markedly different to the millions in public money lost to fraud under the Tories as part of their VIP lane for PPE contracts during the covid pandemic. Andrew Bowie seems far less keen to draw attention to this, despite the fact that it represents a sum several orders of magnitude greater than the total amount embezzled by Murrell, money which was party funds donated by members and supporters, not public money.
The SNP must refuse to cooperate with this political witch hunt dressed up as an enquiry, refuse to appear before it, refuse to give it access to any documentation. If the Committee does decide to press ahead with it, which is highly probable given that only one SNP MP sits on it, it will be gross overreach, going far beyond the remit of a Committee whose purpose according to veteran SNP MP Pete Wishart, who once chaired the Scottish Affairs Committee is “to scrutinise the work of the Scotland Office and to examine the policies, administration and expenditure of the UK Government as they affect Scotland.”
The purpose of the Committee is expressly not to probe into the internal affairs of Scottish political parties. Whatever you think of the SNP, that is setting a very dangerous and unsettling precedent for state interference into opposition political parties. This precedent could easily turn on the Labour and Conservative parties if Reform ever takes power in Westminster. In their haste to score some SNPbad headlines, the Committee members are opening the door to Reform UK weaponising Westminster select committees in order to undermine, damage, and oppress their political opponents.
Labour peer George Foulkes goes even further, suggesting that if the SNP refuse to present themselves to Westminster’s kangaroo court then the Labour government should remove some powers from the Scottish Parliament. That’s an appallingly hypocritical attempt by an unelected politician to undermine an elected Parliament because voters had the temerity to vote for a party he hates. They did it on purpose, George. If voters lose trust in the SNP as a result of this scandal they can do so by not voting SNP. Yet George Foulkes wants to punish the entire Scottish people, including those who didn’t vote SNP, because the SNP keep winning elections.
Bowie’s call for an inquiry also represents the politicisation of a Committee which blew its public trust when it allowed itself to become an arm of Better Together during the 2014 independence referendum campaign. The goal of this proposed inquiry is not to cast light on Murrell’s crimes, or to make recommendations to improve the SNP’s internal procedures, it’s to generate more anti-SNP headlines in an independence and SNP hating media which has already become unhinged in its efforts to find a new angle to this story.
In The Herald today, Kevin McKenna demonstrated just how demented he has become in his hatred of Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP by penning a piece which used the pretext of the upcoming Scotland vs Haiti match in the World Cup to liken Scotland under the SNP to Haiti under the dictatorship of Papa Doc François Duvalier. Under Duvalier, corruption became the central principle of government, rake-offs of industries, bribery, extortion of domestic businesses, and stolen government funds all went to enrich the dictator and his clique of closest supporters.
Papa Doc’s Ton-Ton Macoute paramilitary gangsters terrorised the populace with campaigns of murder, torture, disappearances and extortion rackets aimed against anyone who voiced even the mildest criticism of a murderous dictator who kept the decapitated head of a former opponent in his closet and used voodoo to terrorise the people. Under his rule famine and malnutrition became endemic and the criminal gangs who still blight Haiti became established. Duvalier saw himself as a god and in 1964, he published a catechism in which the Lord’s Prayer was heavily reworded to praise Duvalier instead of God. Yeah, that’s all just like Scotland, Kev. Get a grip, man.
McKenna has now reached the point where he needs an intervention, not a newspaper column. I’m not sure what’s worse, that he wrote this piece, or that the editor of The Herald – which used to be a serious newspaper – saw fit to publish it. Wisely, the paper disabled comments on the article in its digital edition. With the Murrell scandal the media in Scotland has well and truly jumped the SNPbad shark.
The problem for the anti-independence parties and the Sturgeon obsessives is that early indications from post guilty plea polling are that the scandal is not affecting the SNP vote. Reports from the Aberdeen South and Arbroath and Broughty Ferry Westminster by election campaigns are that to the surprise of the SNP candidates the issue is not coming up on the doorsteps. The signs are that this is a classic bubble issue, it matters hugely to those who are consumed by their blind hatred of Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP, in fact it’s all they seem able to think about, but it’s not highly relevant to most voters who are more interested in the cost of living, progress to independence, energy bills, or other bread and butter political issues.
After wrestling for hours with PayPal, I have finally compiled a list of the emails of almost everyone who makes a regular monthly donation to the blog and will soon launch the weekly bonus premium email article for those who make a monthly contribution to the blog. I had hoped to launch this this week but unfortunately it will be delayed for a while.There are a number of people whose emails I am unable to find. Some people donate monthly by Ko-Fi, one makes a monthly donation to last year’s GoFundMe fundraiser, a few people make monthly payments directly by bank transfer. I cannot access the email addresses of any of these people and so cannot add them to the new mailing list. If you are one of these folk, please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com and I’ll add you to the mailing list.
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