Behind the SNP’s years of electoral dominance lay a tightly controlled partnership brought down by scandal and infighting
Daily Telegraph 25/05/26
Early in the morning of April 5, 2023, dozens of officers descended on the suburban home shared by Nicola Sturgeon and her husband, Peter Murrell.
They set up an evidence tent on the driveway while large blue sheets were used to shield the view of the garage and back garden.
In astonishing scenes beamed on to television screens across Britain, police searched the house, using the tent and sheets to shield the items they removed from the watching cameras.
Ms Sturgeon, who had been Scotland’s first minister only two months before, later said her house looked “like a murder scene”.
Her husband, who had been the SNP’s chief executive for more than two decades, was arrested as part of the police investigation into embezzlement.
He admitted to embezzling £400,000 from the party over 12 years at Edinburgh’s High Court on Monday.
It is an extraordinary and humiliating downfall for Scotland’s power couple, who enjoyed nearly a decade of dominance over the country’s devolved government and largest political party.
A teenage Ms Sturgeon met Mr Murrell, who was six years her senior, after he got a job in 1987 running Alex Salmond’s constituency office in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire.
She was already active in the Young Scottish Nationalists. However, they only became close during the 2003 Scottish Parliament election campaign.
He was the party’s chief executive by then and Ms Sturgeon, Mr Salmond’s protegee, worked with him closely each day. They became a couple later that year and moved in together in 2005.
In her memoir, published last year, she described how their home life “gave me stability amidst the madness of frontline politics” and how he “could always make me laugh”.
Mr Murrell “cooked my tea, did my washing and kept the house clean, with rarely a word of complaint,” she wrote, allowing her to focus on her political career.
“Most importantly, he knew and understood the shy girl behind the powerful woman. With him more than anyone, I felt that I could be myself,” she wrote.
Ms Sturgeon said she had “no doubt that he was ‘the one’,” and they married in 2010. By this point she was deputy first minister and health secretary in the first ever SNP government.
Mr Murrell had already been SNP chief executive for 11 years, during which time he had played a pivotal role in its transformation into an indomitable election-winning machine.
“We were excited and happy. Both politically and personally, life couldn’t get much better,” Ms Sturgeon said.
Nicola Sturgeon with her new husband Peter Murrell following their wedding service at the Oran Mor in Glasgow on 16/7/2010
Ms Sturgeon married Mr Murrell in 2010. She described him as ‘the one’ Credit: Danny Lawson/PA
They never had children and she later revealed the painful experience of suffering a miscarriage when she was 40, shortly before the 2011 Holyrood election campaign.
Three years later came another huge blow – this time political. The Yes Scotland campaign that Ms Sturgeon helped spearhead lost the 2014 independence referendum.
However, there was a silver lining for her as the defeat led to Mr Salmond’s resignation as SNP leader and first minister. Ms Sturgeon was crowned as her mentor’s successor in both jobs.
While Mr Salmond delegated power and responsibility to his ministers, Ms Sturgeon tightly controlled her government and her husband was one of the few people in a small circle of trusted advisors she consulted daily.
But SNP insiders told The Telegraph that Mr Salmond warned senior figures in the party that “nothing good would come” of the chief executive being married to the leader.
Yes supporters disrupt an event attended by Leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband (not seen) who was joined by MPs and councillors who travelled north to Glasgow for a day's campaigning in support of the no vote in the Scottish Referendum on September 11, 2014 in Glasgow, Scotland
The Yes campaign failed to win independence for Scotland Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty
Some elder statesmen nationalist politicians also started to raise public concerns that the party and the country was being run by a cabal of two people.
Their concerns were ignored, with Mr Murrell’s supporters arguing that his formidable record of winning elections meant he should stay in post.
Although it suited him to be in the background, while his wife took centre stage, the couple were photographed together at Wimbledon, outside polling stations and at official events such as the Queen’s Jubilee concert.
Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell look on prior to the Men's Singles Final match between Andy Murray of Great Britain and Milos Raonic of Canada on day thirteen of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club on July 10, 2016
Ms Sturgeon and Mr Murrell were photographed together at Wimbledon Credit: Julian Finney/Getty
But the seeds of their downfall were sown in 2017 when Ms Sturgeon launched an appeal to SNP members to donate to a campaign fund for a future second independence referendum in the wake of the Brexit vote.
The online crowdfunder was closed after that year’s general election, which saw the SNP lose 21 of the 56 seats it had won in 2015, having raised almost half its £1m target.
Two years later, in the 2019 general election, the SNP increased its tally of MPs to 48 and a second fundraising website, Yes.Scot, took the referendum fighting fund to nearly £667,000.
However, the party published accounts in October 2020 showing it had just £97,000 in the bank at the end of the previous year. Ms Sturgeon, Mr Murrell and Colin Beattie, the party’s long-standing treasurer, were the three signatories on the accounts.
The disclosure prompted angry questions from rank-and-file SNP members about what had happened to the referendum money and intensified concerns that they were being kept in the dark by the party leader and her husband.
Ms Sturgeon reassured the SNP’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) in March 2021 that there was no reason for concern, insisting the party’s finances had never been stronger.
In a video clip that was later leaked, she also warned SNP members against going public with their concerns, saying this would hit donations to the party.
But three senior officials told the NEC that they intended to resign from the party’s finance and audit committee after being denied sight of the accounts.
The same month, Sean Clerkin, a high-profile independence activist, made a formal complaint to Police Scotland asking them to examine what had happened to the independence fighting fund.
In May 2021, two of the most high-profile NEC members – Douglas Chapman, the new treasurer, and Joanna Cherry, an Edinburgh MP – resigned, citing concerns about a lack of transparency.
Mr Chapman, who was the MP for Dunfermline and West Fife, said he had “not received the support or financial information to carry out the fiduciary duties of national treasurer.”
The following month Mr Murrell provided the party with a £107,000 loan “to assist with cash flow”. Later that year £47,620 was repaid but the £60,000 balance remains outstanding to this day.
Then, in July that year came the pivotal moment when Police Scotland announced an investigation into the party’s finances, titled Operation Branchform.
This foreshadowed a series of political earthquakes, the first of which came in Feb 2023 when Ms Sturgeon suddenly announced she was quitting as first minister and SNP leader.
She cited the “toll” the job had taken on her after more than eight years and denied there was any link with Branchform.
However, it emerged that police had interviewed key witnesses in the case, including Mr Chapman, only days before she announced she was stepping down.
The following month Mr Murrell was forced to step down as SNP chief executive after 24 years, in the face of a threatened no-confidence vote by the party’s NEC.
His downfall was triggered by the SNP officially denying a newspaper story that it had lost 30,000 members, with the party ridiculing the report.
But it later admitted that 72,186 members would choose Ms Sturgeon’s successor as leader, 31,698 fewer than the last published figure.
Murray Foote, the party’s chief spin doctor, was the first to resign for misleading the media, blaming SNP headquarters for “serious issues” with statements he had issued in “good faith”.
Mr Murrell then quit and admitted in his resignation statement that “responsibility for the SNP’s responses to media queries about our membership number lies with me as chief executive.”
He added: “While there was no intent to mislead, I accept that this has been the outcome.”
Later that month Humza Yousaf narrowly won the leadership contest to succeed Ms Sturgeon, despite having the overwhelming backing of the party establishment.
He was confirmed as the new first minister the following day, meaning neither Ms Sturgeon nor Mr Murrell were part of the SNP’s leadership team for the first time in decades.
But far worse was to follow for Scotland’s former power couple barely a week later when police raided their suburban home in Uddingston, near Glasgow.
She described in her memoir her “utter disbelief that...police were in my home, that they had a warrant to arrest my husband and search the house”, saying she was “just totally shaken to the core”.
In addition to their home, the SNP’s headquarters in Edinburgh was searched and electronic equipment removed.
And in one of the iconic images of the scandal, a luxury Niesmann+Bischoff motorhome parked outside the Dunfermline home of Mr Murrell’s elderly mother was towed away by the police.
He was taken to Falkirk police station, where he was questioned for several hours, before being released that evening pending further investigation.
Less than two weeks later Mr Beattie was arrested and questioned. He was also released without charge pending further inquiries.
Then came the extraordinary moment when Ms Sturgeon was arrested in June 2023, only three months after she stepped down as first minister, and questioned by detectives for seven hours.
She was also released without charge pending further investigation and vigorously denied any wrongdoing.
After the sudden burst of police activity, there followed a lull, with police making no comment on what they had found in the Sturgeon-Murrell house or their next steps.
It was not until April 2024, a year after the raid, that Mr Murrell was re-arrested and charged in connection with embezzling funds from the party.
After months of rumours, Ms Sturgeon then announced in January last year that she and her husband had decided to end their marriage after nearly 15 years.
In a social media post, she said they had been separated for some time. However, they both continued to live in their Uddingston home.
She posted on Instagram: “It goes without saying that we still care deeply for each other, and always will.”
Two months later, Mr Murrell appeared in court in Edinburgh charged with embezzlement. He made no plea and was released on bail.
On the same day Police Scotland announced that Ms Sturgeon and Mr Beattie were no longer under investigation.
Speaking outside the home that was raided, Ms Sturgeon expressed her relief and insisted: “I don’t think there was ever a scrap of evidence that I had done anything wrong.”
The former first minister said she was vindicated but did not mention her feelings about what had happened to her husband.
She also announced before the May 2026 election that she would stand down from the Scottish Parliament after 27 years.
While Mr Murrell kept an extremely low profile, only rarely being seen in public, Ms Sturgeon then engaged in a round of media interviews and book festivals to plug the publication of her memoirs.
She received a £300,000 advance for the book, titled Frankly, which was published in August last year to mixed reviews.
In the book she said she “still loves” Murrell but suspected they would have separated, even without the police investigation.
After they left frontline politics, she said: “We would have found that maybe there wasn’t enough holding us together and we would have grown apart.”
Nicola Sturgeon poses with her memoir "Frankly" at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on August 14, 2025
Ms Sturgeon received a £300,000 advance for her memoirs, titled Frankly Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty
Ms Sturgeon hit out at social media speculation that she was having a “torrid lesbian affair” with a former French ambassador to the UK.
But she raised eyebrows by stating she did not consider her sexuality to be “binary”. In a TV interview coinciding with the publication of the book, she twice refused to rule out having a relationship with the woman following the break-up of her marriage.
Ms Sturgeon also raised the possibility of moving to London after she stands down as an MSP, saying she felt like she was under “goldfish bowl scrutiny” in Scotland.
At the start of this year, she disclosed she was “happier now than I have been in my entire life” after “reimagining” herself as a writer.
But in a statement on Monday following Mr Murrell’s guilty plea, Ms Sturgeon said she was “angry, hurt, sad and very distressed”.
Rival politicians questioned her claims that she knew nothing about her husband’s actions, calling them “inconceivable”.
Mr Murrell faces weeks in a prison cell, having been remanded in custody and led away from court in handcuffs before his sentencing on June 23.
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