A rigid daily beauty routine

Courtesy of Sheree Edwards

Lengthy salon appointments

Hair removal

Courtesy of Roxie Robinson

Straightening hair

Dyeing hair

Pressure from generations past

So there it is. We did tell you so.

There will be no trial, no cross-examination, no explanation. The people of Scotland, the members and supporters of the SNP, the wider Yes movement, none of us will ever know what really happened.

Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

We’ll never find out how this could happen, for example.

But there we go. It’s more than six years now since Wings Over Scotland broke the story that hundreds of thousands of pounds were missing from the SNP’s accounts.

(Though so innocent were we at the time that we thought they’d at least been embezzled to be spent on the party’s political campaigning or paying off its debts.)

It’s more than five years since Wings exclusively broke the story that three members of the SNP’s Finance Committee had resigned after Murrell refused to let them examine the accounts to look for the missing cash.

And since Nicola Sturgeon issued a dire warning to the rest of the NEC not to ask any awkward questions about the missing money or else.

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And almost five years since then-SNP President Mike Russell furiously insisted that there was no money missing at all.

It’s also more than five years since we told you (the following month) that the police were officially investigating our discovery.

And since Scotland’s media jeeringly rubbished the story.

It’s now more than three years since Murrell, Sturgeon and the SNP’s former treasurer Colin Beattie were arrested in connection with the missing money.

And it’s more than three years since Murrell’s successor as CEO of the SNP, and former Daily Record editor, Murray Foote predicted that the investigation would result in no charges.

It’s a little under three years since the former editor of Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, Richard Walker, said it was all a lot of fuss over nothing and probably some sort of dastardly Unionist conspiracy.

Everyone whose job it was to tell you the truth lied to you. Except us.

David Leask, may the good Lord bless him, still insists he was right.

And now some small measure of justice been served, too little and too late. Murrell’s thieving left the SNP crippled and all but bankrupt, the “ring-fenced referendum fund” lost forever, the independence movement a broken shell, the greatest chance there’ll ever be of securing Scotland’s nationhood blown in a reign of squalid petty theft, and we won’t even get to know how it happened as his rich still-wife, somehow ignorant of it all even as the shiny fruits of Murrell’s deception piled up in her kitchen, saunters off into the sunset, laughing at all the gullible suckers she left behind.

It’ll be interesting to see what sentence Murrell’s guilty plea – which spares Sturgeon her usual turn as a forgetful witness – gets him. We know Natalie McGarry got almost two years for embezzling £25,000 in very similar circumstances, so one would like to think that swindling 16 times as much would result in a significantly stiffer term.

But Scotland is so crooked after almost a decade with Mr and Mrs Murrell and their loyal appointees in charge that we’re not getting our hopes up.

The final vindication is of course nice. But ultimately, readers, this is, and now always will be, an untold story.

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In every possible way, from start to finish, you got swindled.

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Illustration by Tracy Worrall

9 min read9 min

The war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has wrought significant harm on the global economy, but for the shipping industry, it is only the latest disruption in a series of damaging episodes.

The Covid pandemic triggered a collapse in maritime trade. Then, in 2021, the Ever Given ship blocked up the Suez Canal for five catastrophic days and, in 2023, Houthi rebels in the Red Sea began attacking ships in the Bab al-Mandab strait. From 2023 into 2024, Panama experienced one of its worst droughts in recorded history, limiting the number and weight of ships which could pass through its vital canal – a situation likely to become more frequent with climate change.

The closure of Hormuz, which normally accommodates roughly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade, has therefore added pain to a system already dealing with multiple headaches. But experts warn the impacts on supply chains could become far worse if the conflict drags on over several months, while concerns grow that it could set a precedent for other maritime chokepoints to be weaponised.

In a recent analysis, maritime research consultancy Drewry found that while a short war would be “manageable” for the container shipping industry, a longer conflict of up to a year would “impose a severe shock that will reverberate for years to come”.

A crucial issue is the supply of bunker fuel used by vessels. Since the start of the war, bunker prices have risen by between 60 and 80 per cent.

Drewry’s senior manager for container research, Simon Heaney, tells The House: “The risk from a fuel perspective goes from being a cost risk, which it currently is, to becoming more of a supply risk.

“At the moment, significant inventories have created a buffer, but as those stocks deplete, there could be an issue in terms of just physically getting these ships to do their job.

“I think we’re a long way off from that, but if it carries on for that duration [of up to a year], you’ll see some panic. It will have an impact in terms of how fast ships go – they will slow down to preserve consumption…

“It will start to move from what is currently a fairly limited network issue – a regional problem, and a slight hike in costs – to something much bigger, and it will have wider effects.”

An analysis by S&P Global Market Intelligence meanwhile warns that fuel shortages will have “implications for agriculture, mining and industry as well as transport”, with parts of Africa and south Asia thought to be most exposed.

Sourcing alternative fuels to gasoline and diesel “may be limited”, it adds, as countries start restricting “exports of their own production to protect domestic markets, as has already been the case with mainland China and South Korea”. The Malaysian government has similarly said it will prioritise its domestic supply.

The analysis also highlights the Middle East’s importance in supplying raw materials, gases, plastics and fertilisers to industries around the world, with the potential to “bring down entire supply networks”.

For instance, it points out that while Taiwan’s imports from the region are equivalent to only 2.39 per cent of its GDP, a loss of helium supplies could cripple its electronics output equivalent to 25.2 per cent of its national output.

Nor would the UK be immune to some of these impacts.

“We’ve got exposure to diesel, sulphur, unwrought aluminium,” says Chris Rogers, S&P’s head of supply chain research. “About a third of our imports of unwrought aluminium come from the region, so there is that economic effect even for the UK, directly.”

He points out that the peak shipping season, which typically starts in July, is still to come, meaning that capacity will soon become more stretched. In addition, due to the length of voyages undertaken on different trade routes, there is a substantial time-lag for the impact of disruptions like Hormuz to be felt.

“If we look, for example, at shipping from the Middle East to the United States, in April, the volumes only fell by 25 per cent year-on-year because the last boats hadn’t yet arrived,” says Rogers.

“The UK is still seeing some of that as well, because it’s a similar kind of journey time. It’s only really over the next few weeks that the boats that should have arrived, won’t have arrived… To a certain extent, we could have peace today and there would still be an impact.”

To substitute some of the lost trade to and from the Gulf, the shipping industry has been forced to rapidly utilise several overland alternatives across and around the Arabian peninsula.

MSC, the world’s largest container shipping line, is using the Red Sea ports at King Abdullah and Jeddah, while CMA CGM, the third-largest carrier, has utilised the Turkish port of Mersin.

“They’re using a variety of avenues – it’s not all being concentrated into a couple of substitute ports,” says Heaney. “There are different ways in, but even with these multi-modal solutions, the amount of goods in and out of the Gulf is going to be drastically lower.”

Bolstering these links and building new ones, he warns, will be “urgent”, as countries on the Gulf were “very ill-prepared” for such disruption to their trade flows.

Could other nations follow Iran’s example by using chokepoints as leverage? At an April symposium in Jakarta, Indonesian finance minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa floated the possibility of imposing a toll on ships through the Strait of Malacca – before quickly playing the idea down.

There could be an issue in terms of just physically getting these ships to do their job

“Whether that was a serious suggestion, I doubt,” says Heaney, “but it’s sort of a warning sign: don’t mess with us, because we could do something similar. In the absence of a nuclear deterrent, it’s an economic deterrent they could at least flag, without necessarily needing to deploy.”

Rogers points out that closing either Malacca or Panama would severely hit the economies of the countries in control of those chokepoints. A more realistic threat could come from China.

“The bigger question isn’t ‘Would Singapore or Malaysia feel emboldened to close the Strait of Malacca?,’” says Rogers. The question, he suggests, is: “Does China feel more emboldened to say ‘American sea power ain’t all that, so actually we could blockade Taiwan, and the American navy’s not going to be able to unblockade [it], they’re not going to be able to guarantee shipping’.”

For the shipping industry, the closure of Hormuz has further underscored the need for global trade networks to become more flexible and resilient.

“A lot of talk has gone into resilience and how you make supply chains more robust and able to withstand these shocks that are coming at a far greater speed than ever before,” says Heaney. “You can never eliminate it, but I think we are going to see a recognition that we need to diversify and not put all our eggs in one corridor.

“Even if the Red Sea opens and Suez transits are safe all of a sudden and Hormuz is safe, there needs to be investment and diversification in terms of the routing, just so there is a bit more redundancy in te whole system.”

If cargo distributors can devise “chokepoint-immune supply networks”, says Rogers, with Europe sourcing goods from Turkey and North Africa, and countries in the Americas sourcing more from one another, that could also reduce the scope for severe disruption.

But Jim Hall, an Oxford professor who recently co-authored a research paper on maritime chokepoints, is sceptical about whether this response, known as ‘near-shoring’, would provide much of a solution.

“We know that globalisation is only partially going into reverse, and much as Trump or whoever it may be would wish it away, actually, it brings us a great deal of benefit,” he says.

“I don’t think near-shoring, on-shoring, is going to much reduce our exposure to chokepoint-related disruptions to global trade. Decarbonisation of our economies would do more in that sense.”

The changing climate will also prompt interest from shipping firms in whether more use can be made of the Arctic Sea. The route from north-west Europe to east Asia via Russia’s northern coast is roughly 40 per cent shorter than taking the Suez Canal, but the route is only free of ice during the warmer months of the year and specific vessel types are needed even then.

“They’re smaller [vessels], so you don’t get the economies of scale,” says Heaney. “Even though the climate is making the season that you could use the Arctic a bit longer, it’s debatable how long that is and it’s not necessarily reliable.”

While some Chinese firms have been carrying out test runs along the route, the economics still don’t stack up for large western carriers, he argues – and nor does travelling through Russian waters do any favours for their brand image: “The PR, the optics, from a major carrier perspective are terrible, so none of them really want to touch it with a bargepole.”

Maritime chokepoints show no sign of becoming less critical to the world’s economy, as ships continue to carry about 80 per cent of traded volumes and 50 per cent of traded value worldwide.

Hall’s research, published late last year, found that disruptions at chokepoints affect around $192bn worth of maritime trade each year, which in turn result in estimated economic losses of about $14bn annually, through delays, rerouting, insurance premiums and higher freight costs.

Environmental threats, like tropical cyclones in the Taiwan Strait and droughts in the Panama Canal, account for some of the risk. But Hormuz has demonstrated just how much disruption can be caused when states decide to flout the internationally agreed principle of freedom of navigation.

“It is dawning on smaller nations, who geographically happen to have this leverage,” warns Heaney, “that all of a sudden, here is something you’ve got, that you could potentially use to your advantage.” 

Supporters and opponents of the assisted dying bill gather in Parliament Square June 2025 (Vuk Valcic/Alamy)

6 min read17 min

Feelings are running high following the failure of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to progress. Trust between supporters and opponents is low, and the space for those who are neutral (or even supportive) as to the principle, but concerned about the practicalities, appears to be diminishing.

Some are talking up the potential for bringing matters back by way of a Private Members’ Bill in the new session, and using the Parliament Act to ensure its passage through the Lords. Other parliamentarians are floating the idea of a commission based on the Kim Leadbeater bill. 

Here, we identify some of the lessons that have been learned since October 2024 and set out a proposal for a way to progress – the aim of which is neither to find the long grass nor simply put forward a further iteration of a bill even its own sponsors are not content with.

Lessons learned

Having closely observed, and at stages been in the room for, the process to date, we suggest that the parliamentary debates have helpfully brought out the following five points. 

First, the six-month criteria in truth satisfies nobody. For those who wish precision, it offers false hope, given the impossibility of accurately judging prognosis. For those with degenerative conditions, it excludes unfairly. It is acutely telling in this regard that still no explanation has been advanced why this apparent unfairness does not, in fact, amount to discrimination for purposes of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Second, the arrangements for the panel proposed in the Leadbeater bill satisfy nobody either. For those who wish an additional pre-death safeguard, the panel is neither judicial fish nor truly inquisitorial fowl. For those who wish assistance to be easily accessible, it is simply a bureaucratic (and expensive) hurdle.

Third, seeking to house assisted dying within healthcare is both unnecessary and causes avoidable problems. It is unnecessary because, as Switzerland has demonstrated for over 80 years, there is no reason why the provision of assistance to die needs to be seen as a ‘treatment;’ or why those providing assistance – even if some may be medical practitioners – need to be doing so as part of medical practice. 

It causes avoidable problems, including the distortion of laws as fundamental as the NHS Constitution and the Mental Capacity Act, for the benefit of (objectively) a very small number of people. And medical opposition to assisted dying would probably diminish markedly if delivery were taken out of healthcare.

Fourth, the interaction with suicide prevention is something that cannot be wished away. The state’s duty to secure life, and obligations to address suicidality through the prism of the Mental Health Act 1983, are not discharged simply because a person is terminally ill. Nor is this a dilemma that can be resolved by policing the language used to describe death following assistance under a framework provided for by the bill.

Seeking to house assisted dying within healthcare is both unnecessary and causes avoidable problems

Fifth, a Private Members’ Bill is simply not the appropriate way to bring forward legislation with such significant, and systemic, impacts. Campaigners have every right to seek to put matters on the agenda; they do not, however, have responsibility for, nor expertise in, making law. The undue weight that the Private Members’ Bill process gives to single issue lobby groups creates unhelpful distortions. An issue as complex as assisted dying requires a clear boundary between the role of the campaigner and that of the legislator. 

The way forward 

We urge the House of Commons not to seek to reintroduce the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill as a Private Members’ Bill following the ballot later this month. Instead, we suggest the need to develop a route that could lead to a government bill. That requires recognition that – while the question of whether assistance with death should be available, and to whom, are quintessentially questions of conscience – the question of how such assistance should be provided is, paradigmatically, ‘government business’.

So, how to proceed? We suggest an independent review, whose terms of reference provide for it to move forward on a twin-track basis:

(1) Operationalising assisted dying (without reference to eligibility criteria), drawing on the work done in Jersey, and as well on work done by bodies such as the Nuffield Trust in its August 2025 report, Assisted dying in practice: international experiences and implications for health and social care. Operationalisation would include consideration of safeguards (for instance pre-death confirmation), commissioning and delivery (including outside of the NHS). It would also require operationalisation on a ‘whole systems’ approach, requiring – for instance – the review to consider how assisted dying is to be made to work alongside palliative care and suicide prevention.

(2) Facilitating an informed debate about the eligibility criteria for receipt of assistance. This would enable discussion about whether ‘suffering’ should be a criterion and whether dementia or frailty should be within scope, for example. Many who have followed the debates to date might be surprised to learn that, despite the rhetoric, ‘suffering’ was not a word which in fact appeared in the bill, and also that the bill effectively excluded dementia.  

In relation to (2), the question would inevitably arise: discussion by whom? We suggest that the independent review can – and should – outline suggestions as to the best way to achieve this, for instance a Jersey-style citizens’ jury, or free vote in Parliament, or some combination. 

The overall mechanism must be a government bill, however. Whether this is a matter for the current government, or whether it requires a manifesto commitment, depends on the perceived priority of this issue. What is immediately clear is that good law will not be achieved either by persisting with the model contained in the Terminally Ill Adults Bill, nor by seeking to reintroduce it as a Private Members’ Bill. 

Alex Ruck Keene KC (Hon) is a barrister and professor focused on mental capacity

Gareth Owen is a consultant psychiatrist and professor of psychological medicine, ethics and law

Katherine Sleeman is an honorary consultant in palliative medicine at King’s College hospital, and Laing Galazka chair at King’s College London

All three are members of the Complex Life and Death Decisions research group at KCL