Ian Blackford Mocked Over Nicola Sturgeon Explanation Amid Embezzlement Row

Ian Blackford stunned online critics after he came up with a strange explanation for former first minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon’s ignorance about her estranged husband’s embezzlement crimes.

Peter Murrell, chief executive of the Scottish National Party between 2001 and 2023, pleaded guilty to taking more than £400,000 from the SNP this week.

He has been charged with embezzling funds from the party between August 2010 and October 2022.

Murrell was arrested as part of Operation Branchform, a Police Scotland probe into the party’s finances, in 2023, and charged in April 2024.

He has been remanded in custody and is set to be sentenced at the end of June.

He made a series of extravagant purchases while he was SNP chief, including a £124,550 campervan for his own personal use.

His estranged wife Sturgeon was also arrested in 2024 and questioned by detectives, but was never charged with any offences.

Sturgeon, who led Scotland from 2014 until 2023, has insisted she “did not know at all” about her husband’s crimes and that she has been “deceived, misled, lied to and betrayed”.

The ex-SNP leader, who separated from her partner in January 2025, revealed that this has been the “worst week of my life”.

Speaking at Listowel Writers’ Week in Co Kerry, Sturgeon said she was not aware of many of the luxury products Murrell had bought, including three coffee machines worth over £1,000 each.

Explaining how she did not notice such purchases, the former first minister of Scotland said: “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.

“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.”

Blackford, who worked as the SNP’s Westminster leader from 2017 and 2022, told Times Radio: “I know Nicola very well, she’s a friend of mine.

“Nicola does not have a passion for cooking, it’s not something that she does, so I think that explanation is one that I absolutely can understand.”

“She’s given her explanation, I’m satisfied with the explanation, she’s not someone who would normally spend that much time in the kitchen,” he said.

That explanation went down like a lead balloon on social media, with many criticising the “bizarre” and “insane” response…

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