Politicians take decisions that are often unpopular. Constantly in the public eye, their lives are heavily scrutinised. That’s normal. But imagine, if you can, that you are a female politician who is leader of the government in a small European democracy.
You are extremely busy. You wake up in the mornings and listen to radio news about economic problems or a key industry losing hundreds of jobs. Perhaps over breakfast you check a TV news programme and read local newspapers, one of which is always hostile and accuses you of incompetence. Another attacks your government over some failure that you were not aware of.
All that is just another normal day ahead of committee meetings and public events, opening a new shopping centre, visiting a hospital, taking questions in parliament and perhaps doing a TV interview. After a few years in the job you leave public office and prepare for a calmer life when suddenly a scandal erupts.
Police arrest your husband. They charge him with the theft of £400,000 (Dh1.95 million) in funds from the political party you once led, and inevitably you are barraged by questions about your own conduct, what you knew and when you knew it.
What you have just read is just a rough idea of a scandal that has set all of Scotland talking. It’s an attempt at understanding events following the arrest of the husband of one of Britain's best-known politicians, Scotland’s former first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.
She was once leader of the Scottish National Party, the SNP. Her now estranged husband, Peter Murrell, was formerly the party’s chief executive. That meant he was in charge of party funds. Last month he pleaded guilty to charges of embezzling £400,000 of SNP money. Over 12 years he systematically stole the money to spend on a bewildering series of goods that police concluded amounted to 627 items. These include luxury watches, £2,000 salt and pepper shakers as well as seven vacuum cleaners plus a £124,000 motorhome that was apparently never used.
You may wonder – as many people in Scotland do – why anyone needed seven vacuum cleaners. The whereabouts of those cleaners and some of the other goods is unknown. But beyond the shock, more serious political questions have gone to the heart of Ms Sturgeon’s leadership.
As fellow Scot and as a journalist, I have met and interviewed Ms Sturgeon on numerous occasions about her political views. I interviewed her again at a festival in York a few days ago about her new book, an autobiography called Frankly.
Whether you agree or disagree with her politics and her insistence that Scotland would be better off as an independent country, most Scots would agree that she is a straight talker. She was equally blunt on this occasion. Her book is indeed a frank chronicle of her political development from a shy teenager to become the leader of her country and a new paperback version is expected to include an added chapter that will touch on the Peter Murrell scandal.
In our conversation at a public event at the University of York, Ms Sturgeon indeed spoke frankly. She pointed out her sense of bewilderment about her husband’s conduct and those peculiar purchases, most of which she said she never saw or knew about. She had no clues about the whereabouts of the seven vacuum cleaners.
I talked with audience members afterwards to hear their views. Since this was the north of England, they were unlikely to be SNP supporters. Even so, they expressed considerable sympathy for Ms Sturgeon and for her account of her estranged husband’s behaviour.
You could, of course, criticse the idea of having the spouse of a political leader in control of the party’s money, and some thought that was in retrospect clearly a mistake. But there was a great degree of understanding, especially from some of the women in the audience, that in any marriage a very busy spouse cannot be held responsible for bad behaviour of their partner, carried out in secret.
One big plus from this event was a reminder that politicians are human too, and their relationships can be fraught, like those of any of us. Politicians can also show a sense of humour even in difficult times. Ms Sturgeon told the audience that after the guilty plea by her husband, she bought some shopping in a London department store. When she left and walked on the streets outside, she realised that the plastic carrier bag containing her purchase celebrated the England football team at the World Cup. With a politician’s sense, she immediately understood that the former first minister of Scotland can perhaps be excused for not knowing all her estranged husband’s secrets, but as the World Cup is about to begin a Scottish politician accidentally appearing to show support for the England football team is unlikely ever to be forgiven.
