Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell have been mocked by a campervan float at an historic Scots festival.
A motorhome was towed through Lauder last week as part of the Borders town’s annual Common Riding, complete with two locals dressed as the former first minister and her estranged husband.
A banner attached to the vehicle joked: “New campervan eye test here – approved alternative to the Barnard Castle eye test“, while another sign quipped the vehicle had previously been “parked round the side”.
The local dressed as Murrell was pictured showing off watches on his wrist, while two other participants on the float posed as police officers.
But despite the cheeky float grabbing attention from the gathered crowds and pictures being shared widely on social media, it only claimed third prize in the vehicle category of the festival’s annual fancy dress competition.
One of the organisers told the Record the float was “just a bit of fun to make people laugh” and insisted it was not meant as a political statement.
A campervan purchased by Murrell was one of the central pieces of evidence against the disgraced former SNP chief executive, who was jailed for five years after pleading guilty to embezzlement in May.
View 2 ImagesThe float proved a hit at the Lauder Common Riding fancy dress competition (Image: Chris Batchelor)
It followed a lengthy police investigation – Operation Branchform – into SNP finances.
The luxury motorhome was was bought by Murrell using £124,000 of cash he stole from the Nationalists.
Murrell, 61, pled guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh to embezzling more than £400,000 from his employers. He used the ill-gotten cash to buy a string of luxury goods, including cars, cosmetics, jewellery, gardening equipment and fountain pens.
The best-known of Murrell’s many purchases was the Niesmann and Bischoff motorhome in October 2020. It was bought in Dunfermline and later sat outside Murrell’s mother’s home in the Fife town.
The Record first reported how the campervan was supposedly earmarked for the SNP Holyrood election campaign in 2021 but was never deployed after Covid restrictions were lifted.
But the prosecution cast doubt on that explanation and said there was no evidence the vehicle was ever intended for political purposes.
Sturgeon has repeatedly denied all knowledge of her estranged husband’s offending. She claimed she was first made aware of the motorhome’s existence in 2023 after the home she shared with Murrell was searched by police.
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Officers also searched the Fife home of Sturgeon’s mother-in-law and impounded the campervan on the same day.
The former SNP leader previously claimed in an interview she had never “consciously” saw the campervan as it was parked “round the side” of her mother-in-law’s house.
The fancy dress competition is one of several events that take place in a week of festivities in Lauderdale each year, the climax being a band of horse riders making a circuit of the boundaries of the Borders town.