'The Descent of Sturgeon and Murrell' is a modern opera in the making – John McLellan
Peter Murrell’s courtroom shuffle, Nicola Sturgeon’s tears and John Swinney’s rage provide ample material for any librettist worth their salt
At 79, I don’t know if composer John Adams has another blockbuster political opera in him to follow Nixon in China or the Death of Klinghoffer, but the Descent of Nicola and Peter has all the makings of a classic.
It’s certainly a banker, if that’s the word, for the Scottish National Theatre to top last year’s Festival smash Make it Happen, about the collapse of RBS and Fred Goodwin’s fall from grace. Except I doubt Brian Cox would accept the role of Peter Murrell. A bit too close to home for the Sturgeon fan boy, but maybe like the last time he could play a ghost, not of Adam Smith, but a Fagin-like character singing You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two.
The pictures of Murrell in the dock on Tuesday might not have seemed anything extraordinary to viewers used to seeing such things from American courts and fictional dramas, but it’s very rare for such close-ups of the accused as they face the music. Very senior judges have been clear that live streaming of trials should not be entertainment, but here were cameras zooming in for Murrell’s reactions instead of the usual static courtroom coverage focussed on the beak’s steely pronouncements.
The brief recognition of a face in the courtroom, the impassive gaze, and the crrrick of the handcuffs being reapplied before he shuffled back to the cells were straight out of Twelve Angry Men or Apple Tree Yard.
READ MORE: Why John Swinney would put party first by quitting over Peter Murrell scandal – Paul Wilson
Swinney’s blown gasket
The Scottish news has become like an SNP box-set, with one revelation after another to keep viewers gripped, and enough social media mockery for a separate comedy festival to the Fringe. In less than a week, there has been the tearful Ms Sturgeon not quite telling all to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, the 1,000-yard stare of Murrell in the dock, John Swinney’s government found guilty of contempt of the Scottish Information Commissioner, and the SNP now facing allegations of VAT fraud. No wonder Mr Swinney blew a gasket at First Minister’s Questions.
At least he’ll be happy the police quickly dismissed the attempt by the party’s scourge, Sean Clerkin, to have his original allegations of the £600,000 referendum fund “fraud” reopened.
If former Scotland Secretary Alister Jack once claimed that Ms Sturgeon could cry out of one eye, the theory was certainly put to the test in last Sunday’s interview with Ms Kuenssberg, the result of which was even more mockery for her claim that she could not “consciously remember” seeing the camper van on her mother-in-law’s driveway. Readers of this column last week may recall my prediction that her occasionally flaky memory would desert her under pressure once again, and whaddaya know?
The hubris has reached epic proportions, and such was Ms Sturgeon’s determination to emphasise her previous hectoring of the SNP’s National Executive Council was nothing to do with covering up her husband’s criminality, she appeared to forget that warning off office bearers from questioning the state of SNP finances was every bit as bad.
There has been no hint of remorse for the aggression dished out to her own people, so does she look back at that video and think her tone was that of the inclusive, caring “Chief Mammy” her party wanted the nation to believe she really was?
No sense of responsibility?
We have yet to hear what she thought about the appearance of a cupboard full of toilet rolls just as she was lecturing the rest of us about the evils of panic buying at the start of the pandemic. Like the reaction to Partygate, perhaps there will be interviews with angry people claiming they tried to do the right thing by using newspapers while the First Minister was enjoying the benefits of copious supplies of quilted Andrex.
She was not responsible for Murrell’s crimes, but she certainly benefitted from the proceeds and indeed from her husband’s legal team managing to delete a long list of items clearly intended for her from the charge sheet. Unless there was more to her enthusiasm for trans rights than met the eye.
The former party leader − and the current one for that matter − feels no sense of responsibility for a system which allowed her husband, or anyone else for all we know, to claim thousands of pounds in expenses without proper receipts. They can barely admit it was wrong to let him continue as chief, and let’s remember we were expected to believe, and still are, that they can run an independent country.
And there is more, potentially even more gripping, to come on June 23 when Murrell’s advocate John Scullion KC explains before sentencing why his client was unable to control his compulsive thievery. Will Mr Scullion say Murrell was driven by a desire to give his wife the luxuries he felt she deserved, like a library with an expensive set of steps to reach the high shelves for her beloved books?
Or how his personal finances were always under pressure, and the more distant their relationship became the more he tried to please her with extravagant gifts he couldn’t afford? Ms Sturgeon’s reaction to that would be worth another episode of Kuenssberg Investigates.
Maybe the musical tragedy will be written one day, but it has certainly been an opera of the soap variety, and followers of Coronation Street will know how often the drama in Weatherfield ends in an escape to London. Who would have thought Ms Sturgeon might follow their example with a new life in the Imperial capital of the country which had so wronged the motherland, what with its Barnett Formula and lower income tax rates. It might not be Tosca, but it’s quite the fall.
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