EXCLUSIVE: A former SNP strategist has shed new light on the close working relationship between the couple that ran the party for more than a decade.
Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell were “tight” and made decisions “around the breakfast table instead of the boardroom”, a former senior SNP adviser has said.
Kirk Torrance, who worked at the Nationalists’ HQ in Edinburgh for seven years, told the Record he did not find credible the former first minister’s repeated claims that she was unaware of her estranged husband’s 10-year spending spree.
“I mean, she takes every opportunity to wax lyrical about how much of a micro-manager she is,” he said.
The ex-SNP leader has faced ridicule after she used an appearance at a book festival in Ireland on Thursday to claim she wasn’t aware of the multiple expensive items of kitchenware Murrell had purchased with party cash “I didn’t spend any time in my kitchen”.
Murrell, 61, served as chief executive of the SNP for two decades and married Sturgeon in 2010. They shared a suburban home on the eastern edge of Glasgow before separating last year.
Murrell pled guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh this week to embezzling more than £400,000 from his employers during a decade-long spending spree.
Torrance worked for the SNP as a digital and political strategist from 2009-2016, an era which saw the party win a majority of MSPs at Holyrood in 2011 and secure a referendum on independence in 2014.
He told the Record: “Nicola’s not been charged with any offence, and that must be respected of course, but people are going to find it very difficult to believe, given how centralised the SNP was, that it could operate like that for so many years.”
Asked if he thought the ex-FM’s denials were credible, Torrance said: “No, absolutely not. I mean, she takes every opportunity to wax lyrical about how much of a micro-manager she is.
“Things had become so centralised, with decisions made around the breakfast table instead of the boardroom table. Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell were tight.
“Alex would come into the HQ and say hello to everybody, ask after family members. Nicola would come into the HQ and not say hello to anybody.
“She would walk right up to Peter’s desk, she would tap him on the shoulder, he would look up, she would walk into the library and he would follow. They would spend a few hours in there. Then they would both come out, she would leave, and Peter would call a meeting to tell us what we were doing.”
Torrance quit his job with the SNP in 2016, two years after Sturgeon succeeded Alex Salmond as leader, and claimed by then “things were becoming politically and culturally unhealthy in the party”.
He added: “I thought power was becoming concentrated too much. Alex himself said that, that a leader shouldn’t have been married to the chief executive. And I think it’s one of the reasons why Nicola fell out with Alex.
“Meetings became tenser. It was noticeable that Peter became short-tempered and angry. I don’t know why, but you can only imagine.
“Nicola became increasingly controlling. It was a bad atmosphere. And I had other projects in mind so I took the opportunity to head off.
“Once organisations stop tolerating internal disagreement, they start making bad decisions.”
Torrance said he had no inkling that Murrell was embezzling party funds during their time working together.
“Peter Murrell gave me opportunities professionally during the SNP’s most succesfull years and I’ll always acknowledge that,” he added.
“But what’s happened here is deeply sad to me and deeply disappointing. It’s a terrible situation. We’re not dealing with online rumour anymore, he’s admitted to the fact.”
Sturgeon said on Thursday she had not questioned how her former husband was able to purchase some items as they were both on “high salaries”.
She said she had never seen some of the “stuff” reported this week, but added: “Things that I did recognise, none of it would have made me question.”
“We were two people on high salaries, no kids. I was doing a job – and this is another factor – I was doing a job that had me working around the clock, away from home a lot of the time.”
She added: “Maybe this doesn’t reflect well on me: I didn’t spend a lot of time in my kitchen – spend any time in my kitchen – but I would never question that some of these things he was buying that I was aware of he couldn’t have afforded, because on the basis of our incomes he could have afforded it.”
Speaking at Listowel Writers’ Week in Co Kerry, Sturgeon said: “This has been probably the worst week of my life and you know the last few years have had some tough ones for me, but this one, I think, surpasses all of them.
“You’re coming to terms with the fact that you spent many years – I spent many years – married to somebody that, as it turns out, I obviously didn’t know at all.
“It’s a really painful truth to process, and I think I’m only in the very early stages of processing it. And then to be in a position of such public turmoil myself makes that even harder.”
Sturgeon told the audience said she was “completely exonerated” following the Operation Branchform investigation and “totally cleared” after a “lengthy” and “very forensic” police investigation.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login