The SNP likes to talk up its credentials as a mass member organisation where small donors are the lifeblood of the party.
The Nationalists have attracted some high-profile financial backers over the years but in the main it has had to rely on the rank and file.
It has never been a home for millionaire city bankers like the Tories, or won substantial backing from the biggest trade unions like Labour.
The SNP’s financial clout in the 2010s was built on the explosion in party membership which took place in the aftermath of the 2014 independence referendum. It allowed huge venues like Glasgow’s Hydro to be booked and sold out for party rallies.
John Swinney, as he told the media yesterday, is a donor himself as well as the party’s leader.
It’s this reliance on small donors that makes Peter Murrell’s conviction for embezzlement all the more disgraceful.
The estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon pled guilty in the High Court in Edinburgh to a spending spree that lasted a decade and was financed on the backs of SNP members.
Murrell was brought down by a forensic police investigation that was launched five years ago. There were many in the SNP who previously suggested it was a giant waste of time.
Few will now make that argument. Murrell has admitted to a huge deception that should not have been allowed to go on as long as it did.
There were several high-profile figures within the SNP – ranging from MPs down to committee members – who realised something was amiss and demanded greater scrutiny of the party’s books. They were blocked and dismissed at every turn.
If the SNP is to be trusted by its own members, let alone by the general public, it must explain in greater detail why Murrell was kept in post for so long.
Swinney yesterday attempted to paint his election win as proof the public had moved on and were happy to support his government.
That is an insult, given the details of Murrell’s embezzlement revealed for the first time yesterday.
For too long, the SNP was run as a clique by the same handful of people for the best part of 30 years.
That mattered less when it was a small opposition party with few MPs and no power at Holyrood.
The SNP, despite how it views itself, is now the establishment within the Scottish Parliament.
It can’t shrug off a massive financial fraud that took place within its own party HQ by its own CEO.
Murrell is the man awaiting sentence but the SNP is also in the dock.
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A full inquiry is needed into a scandal that has shamed the SNP and eroded trust in our political system.
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