Nicola Sturgeon says she will not visit jailed husband Peter Murrell

Nicola Sturgeon said she will not visit Peter Murrell in prison, keeping the political fallout from his conviction focused on the Scottish National Party’s credibility rather than on private family damage. Murrell, the SNP’s former chief executive and once one of the most powerful figures in Scottish politics, was jailed for five years and three months after admitting he embezzled more than £400,000 from the party.

The High Court in Edinburgh backdated the sentence to 25 May, when Murrell was remanded in custody after pleading guilty. The court heard the money was spent on purchases including cars, a motormotorhome, kitchenware and toiletries. The embezzlement ran from 2010 to 2022, a period that covered much of the SNP’s years in government and Murrell’s long tenure running the party behind the scenes.

Sturgeon has tried to separate her own position from her estranged husband’s crimes, but the political damage has not gone away. In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg, she said she felt as if she was “serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit” and said she had been “deceived, misled and betrayed” by Murrell. Former first minister Humza Yousaf said Sturgeon looked like a “broken woman” when discussing the case and said he believed she had been unaware of Murrell’s crimes.

The case sits inside Operation Branchform, Police Scotland’s investigation into SNP finances, and that broader inquiry has made the scandal harder for the party to contain. Sturgeon was previously arrested and released without charge, and she was later confirmed to be no longer a suspect. Even so, Murrell’s conviction keeps attention on how a party that dominated Scottish politics for years allowed its former chief executive to be convicted over a six-figure theft.

For the SNP, the issue is no longer only Murrell’s conduct but whether voters see the episode as a closed chapter or as evidence of deeper governance failures at the top.