Nicola’s only crime was to love too much. And to not notice the Jaguar on the drive
Rather than being one of the shrewdest operators in British politics for a decade, it turns out Sturgeon was just too trusting
You know how it is. You wake up and look out the bedroom window. You see a brand new Jaguar worth £81,000 parked in the driveway. You smile to yourself. That’s what you love about your husband. Always nipping out to the shops to buy himself treats. And where’s the harm in that? No one can say he isn’t worth it. And a new car is only a trifle compared with a motor home. That’s just Pete being Pete.
You get dressed and go downstairs. Your husband is already in the kitchen making you breakfast. “Fancy a coffee?” he asks. You nod. You’re busy not reading the SNP accounts. “Which machine would you like me to make it from?” he asks. “The basic Jura? The Jura Z8? Or the Miele? I always think the Z8 makes the best flat white. And what milk would you like?”
You open the back door and look at the Galloway and friesian cows he bought the previous week. Both are grazing on the lawn. You reckon you will try the Galloway today. You smile. You count yourself lucky that you are married to such an amazing man. Someone who can still surprise you after all these years you’ve lived together. Never change, darling man. Never change.
On Sunday morning, Nicola Sturgeon gave her first broadcast interview since her former husband, Peter Murrell, pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from money donated to the SNP by supporters.
This was Nicola as a woman who had been badly wronged. Yet if you had looked behind the lights of the makeshift studio, you might just have been able to see the outline of a man in the shadows. That man was her lawyer, Aamer Anwar. Because who among us doesn’t need their brief on hand when doing a sit-down chat with Laura Kuenssberg? Probably just a precaution to make sure Laura didn’t nick one of the Montblanc fountain pens.
The interview basically consisted of just one question. How could you possibly not have known that your husband had been on the take? Your house was basically a multimillionaire’s remake of the Generation Game. A non-stop conveyor belt of high-value goodies. The garage alone was full of salt and pepper grinders worth more than £2,000 a shot. And even if it had never occurred to you Pete had basically stolen the lot, surely you must have thought his compulsive shopping habit had got badly out of hand?
Nicola dabbed her eye. It wasn’t the people who had donated the money in hope of Scottish independence who were the real victims. It was her. She had been duped. It turned out she had not actually been one of the shrewdest operators in British politics for more than a decade. She was just an ingénue. If she had a fault, it was that she was just too trusting. Her only crime had been to love too much.
It was like this. She had imagined everything had been gifts from an adoring husband. They had no kids and were both earning large salaries. So it had all felt totally normal. In fact, she had been vaguely disappointed Pete had not bought her a helicopter. Or at the very least some diamonds from Tiffany’s. Nor had she ever wondered why a bald man had bought himself a couple of hairdryers. “We had separate bank accounts,” she said. “I used to give him money for the shopping.” Now she came to think of it, £20,000 a week for the Sainsbury’s shop was a little on the steep side. But she had been a very busy woman and had just put it down to the Tory cost of living crisis.
She had never seen much of the loot. Certainly not the watches. Hell, she had hardly ever stayed at her own house. So much so that she could barely remember the address. She was angry and hurt. The betrayal was absolute. And Peter had gone to great lengths to cover his tracks. Except he hadn’t. It had all been there hiding in plain sight. A never-ending supply of goodies. In one year the haul had totalled more than £300,000. But hey! That’s just normal when your salary is about half that.
Laura moved on to the motor home. Here the story moved about a bit. First, Nicola had barely met her parents-in-law. And when she had done, she had always assumed the motor home must have belonged to the neighbours, even though it was parked on the in-laws’ drive. We’ve all done that from time to time.
Then we got to the accounts. Three people had quit the SNP executive because they felt the accounts were iffy, but Nicola, the party leader, had always been quite happy that everything was above board. Oh, that, she said. Accounts always go up and down. There’s always something no one quite understands and you just have to let it go. And the concerns had never been about the money being embezzled. They were about funds that had been given for independence being diverted to electioneering. So that was all fine, then. A completely different crime!
“I’m not going to say sorry for a crime I didn’t commit,” Nicola said defiantly. Nor was she going to say sorry for a crime she might have been able to prevent if only she had a functioning pair of synapses. Silly her. Hell, she hadn’t even noticed the Vermeers that had been hanging on her living-room wall. Or the pet chimp Pete had bought from David Attenborough. Though, to be fair, that’s a mistake any one of us could make.
And there had definitely been nothing suspicious about her saying “No comment” to every question when interviewed by the police. That was just Nicola’s way of trying to be helpful. Now she wanted to be left alone to rebuild her life. To recover.
She could start by keeping her eyes open. See it. Say it. Sorted.
- Nicola Sturgeon
- The politics sketch
- Scottish National party (SNP)
- Scottish politics
- Scotland
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