Arrests, a luxury motorhome and a power couple’s fall: The inside story of SNP police probe
The once “untouchable” SNP is enduring humiliation amid its biggest crisis in decades.
The governing party of Scotland has been tearing itself apart in recent months as its finances come under the spotlight.
Polls have plummeted, arrests have been made, suspects detained, and a luxury motorhome seized as a long-running police investigation picks up pace.
But what is going on?
The SNP is a powerful political operation. It is seen as the dominant face of the Scottish independence cause, and with that position comes cash.
Large numbers of people are willing to donate and become paid-up members of a party they hope and believe will deliver their dream.
The SNP, under Nicola Sturgeon’s watch, boasted of soaring membership figures. It peaked at more than 100,000 – solidifying it as the third largest in the UK.
There was a sense for a long time the SNP hierarchy was untouchable.
The Sturgeon iron-fist operation rarely led to dissent and internal squabbles never really played out in public. The first minister was known for her discipline, but some argued she ran the party on a “need to know” basis where critics who disagreed were quickly side-lined.
Salmond’s ‘wouldn’t end well’ warning
This is a tale of a political power couple. The two at the top of the SNP were married. Ms Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell was the chief executive since 1999.
Former first minister Alex Salmond told me in recent months he warned the pair that the relationship would not work professionally and wouldn’t end well.
Politically, under Ms Sturgeon and Mr Murrell, the SNP was an election-winning machine.
Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell were at the top of the SNP
The pair won every election in Scotland in the 3,000 days they worked together. But they failed to achieve their main mission of securing Scotland’s independence.
Many raised concerns about too few people making all the decisions. Others questioned their strategy and what was really going on behind closed doors.
To appease the SNP faithful, Ms Sturgeon would issue a rallying cry every few years about “kick-staring” the drive towards a second referendum vote.
Where had the money had gone?
The party raised £666,953 through various appeals between 2017 and 2020, saying they would spend the funds on an indyref2 campaign.
But in the subsequent years, audited financial accounts issued via the Electoral Commission revealed a party with far less cash in the bank.
Some supporters had queries after accounts showed it had just under £97,000 in the bank at the end of 2019, and total net assets of about £272,000.
The people who had donated raised concerns about where the rest of the money had gone.
A leaked video of Ms Sturgeon taken in 2021 at a meeting of the SNP’s ruling body appears to show her warning NEC members to be “very careful” about suggesting there were “any problems” with the accounts.
In what looked like an angry exchange, she said: “There are no reasons for people to be concerned about the party’s finances, and all of us need to be careful about not suggesting that there is.”
Around the same time, the SNP’s national treasurer quit – claiming he was not given enough information to do the job.
Douglas Chapman, the MP for Dunfermline and West Fife, resigned after only being in post for a few months.
It was reported at the time that his decision to stand down was linked to a mounting row over the ringfenced independence cash.
Police received formal complaints
Transparency was clearly becoming an issue.
The situation became even more serious for the SNP around that same period when formal complaints were received by Police Scotland.
Detectives began probing fundraising and finances and launched Operation Branchform.
In June 2022, Mr Murrell provided a personal loan of £107,620 to the SNP to help with “cashflow” problems.
His wife then faced awkward questions when the news became public.
She claimed she couldn’t “recall” when she first heard about this large loan involving her partner. The first minister looked uncomfortable and attempted to swiftly move on. It was an eyebrow-raising episode.
Then came the bombshell resignation from Ms Sturgeon, who declared she no longer had the stamina to continue.
The timing took most people by surprise.
The first minister denied it was related to “short-term pressures” and within weeks began her farewell tour of the television studios, including Sky’s Beth Rigby Interviews and ITV’s Loose Women.
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Ms Sturgeon’s interview with Sky’s Beth Rigby
The SNP suffered a bruising and bitter leadership contest which became mired in mudslinging and controversy.
One of the biggest own goals was the saga surrounding the candidates not being given access to how many members were eligible to vote.
The party had previously denied a newspaper report claiming it had lost 30,000 members in recent years.
After a humiliating climbdown the SNP finally conceded the story was true. Red faces all round.
Amid growing claims of secrecy, which threatened to plunge the leadership race into chaos, Mr Murrell quit as the long-standing boss. His Saturday morning departure overshadowed his wife’s final moments in office.
In the end, Humza Yousaf narrowly defeated Kate Forbes to become Ms Sturgeon’s successor.
His premiership stalled before it even began.
Read more:
Sturgeon and Murrell: The downfall of SNP power couple in less than 150 days
Nicola Sturgeon says SNP crisis beyond her ‘worst nightmares’
Who is at the centre of the police investigation into the SNP?
It quickly became public “the Murrells” had failed to disclose to the new first minister that the party he now leads had been without auditors for its financial files. Accountants, who had worked for the SNP for a decade, quit last year.
Withholding this vital information from so many senior figures in the nationalist ranks caused further embarrassment and added fuel to the fire of “cover-up” claims.
Then came the biggest bombshell of all. Mr Murrell was arrested.
Uniformed officers swarmed the Murrell/Sturgeon house on the outskirts of Glasgow. A white evidence tent was erected on the front lawn.
Police Scotland officers at the home of Ms Sturgeon and Mr Murrell
The search was part of a probe into the SNP’s funding and finances
Detectives released their “suspect” without charge after almost 12 hours of questions. Ms Sturgeon later described this as her “worst nightmare”.
The scenes were unthinkable just a few short months ago. The house of Scotland’s political power couple raided and searched for more than 30 hours.
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Sturgeon: Last few weeks ‘very difficult’
The following day I, and every political journalist in Scotland, were invited to the first minister’s official residence in Edinburgh for a briefing with Mr Yousaf.
We entered the same room where Ms Sturgeon had made that infamous resignation speech a few weeks before.
This time the lectern and rows of chairs were replaced with sofas in a circle with tea, coffee and cakes at the edge of the room.
Mr Yousaf arrived, rolled up his sleeves and answered every question from reporters before camera crews were summoned to record interviews for TV, including Sky News.
This was a far cry from the Sturgeon regime and was clearly a deliberate strategy to send out a signal of resetting relations.
Over the following days, the Sunday newspapers revealed a picture of a large, luxury motorhome being seized by detectives outside of the Fife home of Mr Murrell’s 92-year-old mother. It was thought the vehicle could be worth more than £100,000.
The chaos was set to continue. What on earth did a political party need a campervan for?
First Minister Humza Yousaf didn’t know about the SNP motorhome until he became party leader
I confronted Mr Yousaf about when he became aware the motorhome was an “SNP asset”.
He confirmed it was owned by the party and had been kept in the dark about it until he became leader.
It led to further questions about the extent of the police probe on the party’s finances.
The SNP accounts for 2021 include new “motor vehicles” worth £80,632 after depreciation among the party’s assets. There has been no confirmation whether this figure is a reference to the luxury campervan.
Those accounts were signed off by the national treasurer Colin Beattie.
He became the second “suspect” to be arrested by Police Scotland, two weeks after Mr Murrell.
Mr Beattie, who has overseen the SNP’s finances for almost two decades, was released without charge pending further investigations.
Former SNP treasurer Colin Beattie was arrested and later released as part of the police probe
When questioned by reporters, the 71-year-old first said he had no knowledge of the motorhome before later clarifying he was aware.
A bizarre episode in the SNP soap opera.
Mr Yousaf is attempting to get a grip of the party’s governance, but the polls paint a grim picture for his immediate electoral fortunes.
Is that the cost of excessive control by a closed circle run by Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell? Sir Keir Starmer certainly hopes so.
World
Is this what the beginning of a war looks like? How the US threat around Venezuela is shaping up
Is this what the beginning of a war looks like?
In the deep blue waters of the Caribbean, visible from space, an unremarkable grey smudge.
The USS Gerald R Ford seen off the US Virgin Islands on 1 December. Credit: Copernicus
But this is the USS Gerald R Ford: the largest, most deadly aircraft carrier in the world. And it is only part of an armada, apparently set on Venezuela.
The Gerald R Ford, USS Winston S Churchill, USS Mahan and USS Bainbridge in the Atlantic on 13 November. Source: US Department of Defense
From being able to count on one hand the number of warships and boats in the Caribbean, since August we can see the build-up of the number, and variety of ships under US command.
And that’s only at sea – air power has also been deployed, with bombers flying over the Caribbean, and even along the Venezuelan coast, as recently as this week.
A Boeing B-52H Stratofortress near Venezuelan coast from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, on 3 December. Credit: FlightRadar24
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro told crowds his country has endured 22 weeks of aggression from the US and Donald Trump.
Things could be about to get worse.
So let’s rewind those 22 weeks to understand how we got here…
‘Drug boat’ strike
On 2 September, the White House posted on X that it had conducted a strike against so-called “narcoterrorists” shipping fentanyl to the US, without providing direct evidence of the alleged crime.
Sky’s Data & Forensics unit has verified that in the past four months since strikes began, 23 boats have been targeted in 22 strikes, killing 87 people.
Read more: The US-Venezuela crisis explained
The latest was on 4 December, after which US Southern Command announced it had conducted another strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific.
It was the first such strike since 15 November and since the defence secretary, sometimes referred to as secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, came under scrutiny for an alleged “second strike” in an earlier attack.
The US says it carried out the action because of drugs – and there has been some evidence to support its assertion.
The Dominican Republic said it had recovered the contents of one boat hit by a strike – a huge haul of cocaine.
Legal issues
Whatever the cargo, though, there are serious, disputed legal issues.
Firstly, it is contested whether by designating the people on the boats as narcoterrorists, it makes them lawful military targets – or whether the strikes are in fact extra judicial murders of civilians at sea.
And more specifically… well, let’s go back to that very first video, of the very first strike.
What this footage doesn’t show is what came afterwards – an alleged “second strike” that targeted people in the water posing no apparent threat.
That has created a crisis for Hegseth.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting last week, the defence secretary said he did not see that there were survivors in the water when the second strike was ordered and launched in early September, saying that “the thing was on fire”.
And the 4 December strike shows this strategy isn’t over.
The strikes are just part of the story, as warships and planes have headed toward the region in huge numbers.
Drugs or oil?
Some have said this isn’t about drugs at all, but oil.
Venezuela has lots – the world’s largest proven reserves.
Speaking to the faithful on Fox News, Republican congresswoman – and Trump supporter – Maria Salazar said access to Venezuela would be a “field day” for American oil companies.
And Maduro himself has taken up that theme. A few days later, he wrote this letter to OPEC – which represents major oil producing nations – to “address the growing and illegal threats made by the government of the United States against Venezuela”.
That’s how Maduro has framed this – a plan by the US “to seize Venezuela’s vast oil reserves… through lethal military force”.
Lethal military force – an understatement when you think of the armada lying in wait.
And it may be called upon soon. Trump on Tuesday said he’s preparing to take these strikes from international waters on to Venezuelan territory.
Maduro has complained of 22 weeks of “aggression”. There may be many more to come.
Additional reporting by Sophia Massam, junior digital investigations journalist.
The Data X Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
Donald Trump’s bruising assessment of Europe as “weak” and “decaying” is a bitter blow to nations already reeling from the release of his national security strategy.
At the end of the 45-minute interview with Politico, EU leaders might be forgiven for thinking, with friends like these, who needs enemies?
“Europe doesn’t know what to do,” Trump said, “They want to be politically correct, and it makes them weak.”
Trump meets leaders from Ukraine, Germany, France, the UK, Italy, and Finland, as well as the EU and NATO, in August Pic: Reuters
On the contrary, I would imagine some choice words were being uttered in European capitals as they waded through the string of insults.
What has Trump said?
First up, the US president criticised European leaders for failing to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
“They talk but they don’t produce. And the war just keeps going on and on,” he said.
The fact that the Russians have shown no real commitment to stopping the invasion they started is not mentioned.
Instead, the blame is laid squarely at the feet of Ukraine and its allies in Europe.
“I think if I weren’t president, we would have had World War III,” Trump suggested, while concluding that Moscow is in the stronger position.
Trump meeting European leaders in the Oval Office in August. Pic: @RapidResponse47
Does he have a point?
Critics claim that the White House has emboldened the Kremlin and brought Putin in from the cold with a summit and photo opportunities.
Trump highlights the fact that his return to office forced many European NATO members to increase defence spending drastically.
On this, he is correct – the growing insecurity around how long America can be relied on has brought security into sharp focus.
But the release of the new US national security strategy has only added to the feelings of unease.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday claimed some of its contents were unacceptable from a European point of view.
“I see no need for America to want to save democracy in Europe. If it was necessary to save it, we would manage it on our own,” he told a news conference in Rhineland-Palatinate, the German state where Trump’s paternal grandfather was born.
Meeting between, left to right, Keir Starmer of the UK, Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron of France, Donald Tusk of Poland, and Friedrich Merz of Germany. Pic: AP
The leader of the EU’s biggest power also said the new US strategy was not a surprise and largely chimed with the vice president’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in February.
For this reason, Merz reiterated that Europe and Germany must become more independent of America for their security policies.
However, he noted, “I say in my discussions with the Americans, ‘America first’ is fine, but America alone cannot be in your interests.”
For his part, while Trump said he liked most of Europe’s current leaders, he warned they were “destroying” their countries with their migration policies.
He said: “Europe is a different place, and if it keeps going the way it’s going, Europe will not be…in my opinion, many of those countries will not be viable countries any longer. Their immigration policy is a disaster”.
He added: “Most European nations… they’re decaying.”
Read more:
Analysis: Putin preparing for more war, not less
White House: Europe ‘unrecognisable in 20 years or less’
Again, the comments echoed his security strategy, which warned immigration risked “civilisation erasure” in Europe.
There’s no doubt immigration is a major concern for many of the continent’s leaders and voters.
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Zelenskyy meets European leaders
However, irregular crossings into the EU fell 22% in the first 10 months of 2025 according to Frontex, a fact which seems to have passed the president and his team by.
“Within a few decades at the latest, certain Nato members will become majority non-European”, his security document warned.
It also suggested “cultivating resistance” in Europe “to restore former greatness” leading to speculation about how America might intervene in European politics.
Trump appeared to add further clarification on Tuesday, saying while he did not “want to run Europe”, he would consider “endorsing” his preferred candidates in future elections.
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This comment will also ruffle feathers on the continent where the European Council President has already warned Trump’s administration against interfering in Europe’s affairs.
“Allies do not threaten to interfere in the domestic political choices of their allies,” Antonio Costa said on Monday.
“The US cannot replace Europe in what its vision is of free expression… Europe must be sovereign.”
So, what will happen now, and how will Europe’s leaders respond?
If you are hoping for a showdown, you will likely be disappointed.
Like him or loathe him, Europe’s leaders need Trump.
They need the might of America and want to try to secure continued support for Ukraine.
While the next few days will be filled with politely scripted statements or rejections of the president’s comments, most of his allies know on this occasion they are probably best to grin and bear it.
World
‘Cheap ceasefire’ between Ukraine and Russia would create ‘expensive peace’ for Europe, Norway’s foreign minister warns
A “cheap ceasefire” between Ukraine and Russia – with Kyiv forced to surrender land – would create an “expensive peace” for the whole of Europe, Norway’s foreign minister has warned.
Espen Barth Eide explained this could mean security challenges for generations, with the continent’s whole future “on the line”.
It was why Ukraine, its European allies and the US should seek to agree a common position when trying to secure a settlement with Vladimir Putin, the top Norwegian diplomat told Sky News in an interview during a visit to London on Tuesday.
Ukraine war latest: Trump says Putin has upper hand in peace talks
“I very much hope that we will have peace in Ukraine and nobody wants that more than the Ukrainians themselves,” Mr Eide said.
“But I am worried that we might push this to what in quotation marks is a ‘cheap ceasefire’, which will lead to a very expensive peace.”
Explaining what he meant, Mr Eide said a post-war era follows every conflict – big or small.
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Inside Ukraine’s underground military HQ
How that plays out typically depends upon the conditions under which the fighting stopped.
“If you are not careful, you will lock in certain things that it will be hard to overcome,” he said.
“So if we leave with deep uncertainties, or if we allow a kind of a new Yalta, a new Iron Curtain, to descend on Europe as we come to peace in Ukraine, that’s problematic for the whole of Europe. So our future is very much on the line here.”
He said this mattered most for Ukrainians – but the outcome of the war will also affect the future of his country, the UK and the rest of the continent.
“This has to be taken more seriously… It’s a conflict in Europe, it has global consequences, but it’s fundamentally a war in our continent and the way it’s solved matters to our coming generations,” the Norwegian foreign minister said.
Russia ‘will know very well how to exploit vagueness’
Asked what he meant by a cheap ceasefire, he said: “If Ukraine is forced to give up territory that it currently militarily holds, I think that would be very problematic.
“If restrictions are imposed on future sovereignty. If there’s vagueness on what was actually agreed that can be exploited. I think our Russian neighbours will know very well how to exploit that vagueness in order to keep a small flame burning to annoy us in the future.”
Progress being made on peace talks
Referring to the latest round of peace talks, initiated by Donald Trump, Mr Eide signalled that progress was being made from an initial 28-point peace plan proposed a couple of weeks ago by the United States that favoured Moscow over Kyiv.
That document included a requirement for the Ukrainian side to give up territory it still holds in eastern Ukraine to Russia and Mr Eide described it as “problematic in many aspects”.
But he said: “I think we’ve now had a good conversation between Ukraine, leading European countries and the US on how to adapt and develop that into something which might be a good platform for Ukraine and its allies to go to Russia with.
“We still don’t know the Russian response, but what I do know is the more we are in agreement as the West, the better Ukraine will stand.”
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