Best Of

'Nicola Sturgeon has told the BBC she feels like she is "serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit", after her estranged husband admitted embezzling £400,000 from the SNP, the party she led for years.

In an exclusive interview with Laura Kuenssberg, Scotland's former first minister refused to apologise for the scandal and struggled to hold back tears, recalling gifts from Peter Murrell that turned out to have been purchased with stolen money.

Sturgeon told the BBC: "I am not responsible for the crimes that my former husband committed and I'm not going to apologise for somebody else's crimes."

She has consistently denied any knowledge of Murrell's wrongdoing, committed between 2010 and 2022.

The former first minister was not charged following a police investigation.'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2027k1ev3zo

Even if you accept her innocence of the specific crimes, her lack of curiousity both at home and in her job as SNP leader is the crime she is being accused of. But she has always had a very selective memory. Her behaviour around the Salmond affair stinks, to be honest.

Kemi is lowering standards, ferfuxake, what a terrible idea.

Builders as Tory MPs? I mean no wonder she keeps on getting mullered in elections.

Badenoch: I want teachers and builders to become Tory MPs

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/05/30/badenoch-want-teachers-builders-future-tory-mps/

'Future Tory candidate selection, she said, would focus on the five C’s – cleverness, charisma, communication skills, conviction and Conservatism.

“I will not allow people who do not share our beliefs to use the Conservative Party as a vehicle to further their personal ambitions,” she added.'

What is capital C Conservatism? People have very different ideas about that.

Thesedays around half the people who might be interested in Conservatism are more excited by Reform - never mind if they are conservative or Conservative.

Will they have to provide certification for cleverness, whatever that is as she palpapbly can't according to US sources

Will she have yo evidence she has any charisma, she has none.

Will they only communicate on Twitter like her?

Will they have the conviction to deny saying she wanted to go to war with US v Iran when she definitely did, or will you need a conviction for web hacking?

FFS

She makes Truss look like Theresa

Kemi is a software engineer and systems analyst not a lawyer or PPE or Humanities graduate so I suppose she wants some more practical people like her

FINALLY...Kemi brags about being an Engineer!

The word has connertations of the Golden Industrai era, a Golden technology age, hands dirty in oil.

But NO

"Kemi is a software engineer and systems analyst "

That is plain English (at the very low level of work experience she had is)...

"I'm sorry your Computer is not working please turn it off at the plg, count to 30 and see if it works, if it doesn't ring the IT Call Centre back and me or one of my 200 colleagues sat in this old warehouse will tell you to do the same again"

The Kemi-hate is strong with this one.

As is the misogyny.

The treble-chin-and-gin ignorance is of note. The belief that IT is just about “make my Excel work” is why many U.K. software startups end up seeking US investment.

Software "engineers" are not Engineers.

Are electronics engineers "engineers"?

You can be accredited to the Engineering Council as a software engineer, Chartered institute for IT (formerly BCS).

Kemi is lowering standards, ferfuxake, what a terrible idea.

Builders as Tory MPs? I mean no wonder she keeps on getting mullered in elections.

Badenoch: I want teachers and builders to become Tory MPs

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/05/30/badenoch-want-teachers-builders-future-tory-mps/

'Future Tory candidate selection, she said, would focus on the five C’s – cleverness, charisma, communication skills, conviction and Conservatism.

“I will not allow people who do not share our beliefs to use the Conservative Party as a vehicle to further their personal ambitions,” she added.'

If she's serious, this is good news. The party has been destroyed by selecting candidates ranging from merely awful to sociopathic in recent times. There are endless horror stories about it. Even as Boris removed the wets the party management was selecting worse ones. I hope there's also a significant role for local associations.

Local associations must have more role in picking the shortlist which they were largely denied at the last general election...

Why must they?

I don't mean that local parties picking candidates is inherently bad, and obviously it pleases members and may not be unreasonable to give them roles purely on a party management basis. But I'm curious if there is any indication the quality of locally picked candidates is any better than centralised control, or indeed whether either way does better come election time?

I'd assume the effect is minimal, some right duffers parachuted in by national parties win all the time when the parties do well, but curious if outside party management there is any genuine benefit to be had.

The problem is that the Conservative Party seems to attract pathological personalities.

TRiP

Rory & Al say who are the most evil people they've shaken hands with (2 minutes):-
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rmRIhqjib5A

I win this game - Jimmy Savile - as I overtook him in a half-marathon.

I liked the story about glam wrestler Adrian Street giving Savile a real doing in the wrestling ring because he’d heard he was DAF. He subsequently said he’d have killed if he’d known all the fixing that Jimmy had done.

Adrian Street, a Welsh professional wrestler, pictured with his father, a coal miner in 1974. Street later became known for ripping out chunks of Jimmy Savile's hair during a wrestling match after Savile had bragged about assaulting underage girls.
More of Adrian in the comments

https://x.com/utterlyinterest/status/2059678442539409511?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q

We must stop being in hock only to the bond markets.

No one voted for the bond markets.

https://x.com/ZackPolanski/status/2060784820058235342

They pretty much did vote for them, when they voted in Governments who spent more than they took in tax.

Populism in a nutshell. It sounds an easy hit. Bond markets? Yeh, bastards. All evil. All billionaires. etc etc. We don't need them. F*ck 'em.

Back in planet reality, they are are just our creditors.

We borrow and we owe.

Increasingly thanks to the destruction of the Final Salary Pension system they are foreign.

But it doesn't matter how you dress it up and squeal and rage and shout and shout until you are sick that it is not fair, the country borrowed the money and the country owes the money.

That is the point. If you run a balanced budget, you can ignore the bond markets.

If you want to borrow from them, they get a vote.

More Sturgeoning! More Murrelling! Turn it up to 11!

New Scotland Westminster poll.
Norstat (Sunday Times) 27-29 May (1,002)

34% (+5) SNP
17% (-1) Reform
16% (-3) Labour
(others not yet published)
Changes since Norstat 30 April.

https://x.com/ammacj/status/2060834557818007776?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q

The criticism should continue, irrespective of whether it is 'working', since it remains reasonable to criticise. Things don't have to have political advantage to justify being raised.

Yes, I’ve been greatly touched by the sincere concern for we poor defrauded SNP members.

So because many do want to get political advantage out of the situation and may couch their questions in faux concern for others the genuine criticisms of how the political leadership failed to prevent the crimes taking place should just not happen?

I'm genuinely confused as to what you think may be appropriate in the situation, since if we just ignore political criticism because many(most) of those criticising have skin in the game as it were, we'd never get much criticism at all. Almost by definition the side being criticised will (almost) never acknowledge fault beyond the 'sorry we got fooled' stage, and the side doing the criticising will overdo it in an effort to maximise their own advantage.

One think I am curious about is what measures parties with bigger organisations have in place to, hopefully, prevent them from being ripped off.

The Commons expenses system worked quite well in my experience - you submitted a claim monthly, and were politely informed by the independent office if anything was not eligible (effectively not primarily for non-partisan Commons work). I was pretty parsimonious - not sure how the office would have reacted if I'd often claimed unlikely stuff. Having the scrutiny done by an office separate from the parties seemed key. The SNP checking seems to have been done by a party office, who will have been reluctant to challenge the leader's partner.