UK political drama intensifies as sturgeon arrested in SNP probe

Former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was arrested as part of an investigation into the Scottish National Party’s finances, capping 48 hours of political drama in the UK.

Sturgeon, who spearheaded the drive for Scottish independence, was released later on Sunday without charge. Police Scotland, who confirmed her arrest, said a 52-year-old woman was questioned by detectives for several hours before being released from custody at 5:24 p.m.

The probe continues and a report will be sent to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Scotland’s public prosecution body, police said. The arrest comes less than three months after Sturgeon stepped down as leader of the SNP and head of Scotland’s semi-autonomous government in Edinburgh.

Nobody has been charged and Sturgeon said on Twitter she knows “beyond doubt that I am in fact innocent of any wrongdoing.” But whatever the outcome, Sturgeon’s arrest underscores a period of upheaval for the SNP and casts a shadow over a formidable figure whose party has dominated Scottish politics for more than a decade.

It also comes as opinion polls show the opposition Labour Party is gaining support in Scotland, seen as a key battleground as leader Keir Starmer seeks to capitalise on the turmoil in the SNP and the UK’s governing Conservatives to take power in an election expected next year.

On Friday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was suddenly faced with another hurdle to unite the Conservatives after predecessor Boris Johnson resigned as a member of parliament along with two allies.

Sturgeon has been one of Britain’s most popular politicians in recent years, challenging successive Conservative UK prime ministers over the era’s most totemic issues, from austerity measures to leaving the European Union and the handling of the pandemic.

Her departure at the end of March came as she tried and failed to force the government in London to permit another referendum on independence. The SNP will hold a special conference later this month to consult party members on the way forward.

Meanwhile, officers have been looking into whether £600 000 ($754,000) in donations to the SNP to help the campaign for Scottish independence may have been used for other purposes.

Sturgeon led the party and Scotland’s semi-autonomous government from late 2014 until her surprise resignation in February. Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, who was the party’s chief executive, had previously been arrested in the probe along with the party’s former treasurer. Sturgeon’s questioning by police had been widely expected.

The investigation — and its dramatic fallout — has left her successor, Humza Yousaf, struggling to navigate the SNP through its most testing time in years. After a divisive leadership contest in March, his ability to get the party back on track will be tested at the next general election.

According to John Curtice, a politics professor at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, the SNP’s travails could benefit Labour as it tries to claw back popularity in Scotland and oust Sunak’s Tories in a general election due by January 2025. It would be wrong, though, to write off the SNP, he has said.

In 2019, when Johnson won a majority in Westminster, the SNP took 48 of Scotland’s 59 districts. The SNP, the third-largest party in the UK House of Commons, still had a significant poll lead in Scotland after Sturgeon’s resignation and the investigation become public.

The SNP has weathered scandal before. In March 2021, Sturgeon was embroiled in a bitter dispute with her predecessor and former mentor, Alex Salmond, over the handling of sexual harassment allegations and whether she broke the ministerial code. She went on to win big again in Scottish parliamentary elections two months later, and used that mandate to reinforce her push for an independence referendum.

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