FORMER MEMBERS VOTING AMID SNP FINANCE FEARS
Mail reporting reveals former party members are voting in the SNP leadership race amid growing questions about the state of party finances
WHY have former members of the SNP received ballots entitling them to vote in the leadership election? Fresh revelations have arisen concerning the integrity of the process electing the next First Minister, alongside continuing questions about party finances.
Daily Mail journalists have established that ex-SNP members have been posted ballots enabling them to vote in the SNP leadership election. According to reporting, “one man, who cancelled his monthly SNP direct debt last August, told the Mail yesterday he had been offered a vote”.
One explanation offered by SNP National Secretary Lorna Flynn is that members automatically get sent an email with a link enabling them to vote, and as matter of automated routine anyone without an email gets a ballot posted out. The only issue with this is that it doesn’t explain how ex-members of the party are still receiving voting privileges.
Caught up in this strange turn of events is the lingering issue of SNP finances. It is well known that back in March 2021 prior to the Holyrood election three members of the party finance and audit committee resigned. They were followed in May of the same year by the resignation of the elected treasurer. Douglas Chapman had been voted in to replace long-time treasurer Colin Beattie but resigned citing he had been prevented from fulfilling his fiduciary duties.
“I had not received the support or financial information required to carry out the fiduciary duties of National Treasurer."
As soon as Mr Chapman resigned, in came Mr Beattie once again, after a short interregnum where the top offices of the SNP were held by only a husband and wife team.
Ultimately these events get rolled up into the ongoing fraud squad probe called Operation Branchform, which has been digging into various complaints about allegedly missing fundraiser cash.
Things took a fresh twist this year however after revelations of a loan from Peter Murrell - SNP Chief Executive and husband to outgoing leader Nicola Sturgeon - made a loan to the party. It turns out the loan of £107,620 loan was interest-free and made to the SNP on 20 June 2021 apparently to assist the “party cash flow”. The date of the Murrell loan is extremely interesting given it took place the day after the party's National Executive Committee met to discuss the Police Scotland investigation…
Furthermore it was registered late with the Electoral Commission and was not recorded in the books as a loan from Peter Murrell. I’m sure we all would like to know why the loan was recorded as “executive management” instead of being from “Peter Murrell”.
Why was there an attempt to cloak the identity of the source of the loan? And did the funds for the loan come out of an joint account maintained by Mr Murrell and his wife the outgoing First Minister Nicola Sturgeon? Ms Sturgeon has only commented to insist that she “can’t recall exactly when I first knew that” the loan was made, and to insist the dosh came from “his [Murrell] resources”. Interestingly none of that is a denial the loan money sprang from a join account, merely that she can’t remember when she first learned of the loan to the party she leads and that none of the cash was hers.
According to latest reports the cops have already interviewed Mr Chapman as a witness, and former National Executive Committee (NEC) member MP Joanna Cherry has commented publicly “there is a bit of a smell around the finances”. Quite an incredible statement to make, only underscored given she also resigned from the NEC in protest at Mr Murrell allegedly denying full access to the party books.
Alongside the “smell” emanating from SNP party finances is the troublesome issue of how many members the party even has; an important issue given it is now electing the next First Minister. Publicly the party has insisted it has over 100,000 members, but this doesn’t seem to be true. Apparently the true number of SNP members has only been revealed after the nationalists confessed to the independent firm running the vote counting they only have 78,000 members. This means the SNP under outgoing leader Nicola Sturgeon haemorrhaged 50,000 members since 2019 (when the boasted a 125,000-strong membership).
Ultimately the reason the number of members matters is twofold. Firstly, it links back to the question of SNP finances. According to Mail reporting one ex-member sent a ballot to vote on the SNP leadership also received twelve days prior an email pleading with him to restore his membership because “it would help us keep the party finances ticking over”. In the context of a fraud squad probe, missing ‘ring fenced’ fundraiser dosh and a mysterious compliance-breaking loan to the SNP, bizarre emails to ex-members offering them a vote on next SNP leader in return for membership dues becomes fascinating. Just what is the state of SNP finances? I for one would really love to know.
Secondly, these people are electing the next First Minister, not just a new leader of the SNP. The question of who is entitled to vote, who actually is voting are all central to the veracity and legitimacy of the process. Already we have seen two of the three candidates question the voting process, amid legitimate questions of a fix being in to tip the scales in favour of the candidate the Sturgeonite leadership prefers.
An independent third party may be overseeing the counting of the vote and conduct of the election, but the question of who is actually voting is another matter. Given latest Daily Mail revelations, we need to ask why did former members get the vote?
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