UNIONISTS are “licking their wounds and lashing out” at Nicola Sturgeon in response to their "catastrophic” election results, a former SNP MP has claimed.
John Nicolson, the former MP for Ochil and South Perthshire, told The National that the ire directed at the former first minister in the wake of her estranged husband’s admission that he embezzled more than £400,000 from the SNP, was down to their drubbing in the election earlier this month.
Labour, the Tories and the LibDems are demanding a Holyrood inquiry into the culture in the SNP which they claim enabled Peter Murrell to pilfer members’ cash to fund extravagant purchases.
Nicolson, who lost his seat at the 2024 General Election, said: “I think there’s a kind of disbelief among the opposition parties at just how badly they did. The leader of the LibDems was running round screeching about what a wonderful result he had.
“I mean he came last and he lost multiple deposits and his boss down in Westminster came up to leap around and celebrate. We know that Anas Sarwar was predicting that he’d be first minister until recently. The worst ever Labour result.
“And Lord Offord, the leader of the Reform party, came third in his own seat. So it was a catastrophic result for all of them and I think they’re kind of licking their wounds and lashing out.”
Of the parties which won seats in the most recent Holyrood election, only the Greens and LibDems increased their share of the vote, with Reform UK having not contested the previous election.
Elsewhere, Nicolson said that he found some of the scrutiny to which Sturgeon has been subjected “misogynistic”.
He said: “I’m a bit uncomfortable, as I was during the grilling that Nicola got in Holyrood over Salmond and the criminal charges that he was cleared of, and Nicola was asked to apologise for stuff that Salmond had either done or had been alleged to have done.
“That was the tone of some of the questioning, which I thought was enormously misogynistic and once again there’s an element of that. She’s being asked to apologise for his crimes.”
He added that the SNP had not “escaped electoral sanction” for the Murrell scandal as some have claimed, saying that the issue proved “very damaging” for them in the 2024 election.
Nicolson said: “When I fought the 2024 election, I went round the doors where people were talking about this all the time. There was a lot of disinformation about and it was certainly very damaging to my campaign as a candidate and I know to others across the country.
“There was a widespread belief that this was public money that had been stolen. And, of course, a lot of hostile folk in the Scottish press did their best to blur the distinction as did political opponents.”
He added: “The SNP didn’t escape [sanction], as I know to my cost because it was a big issue in 2024 and it was mentioned in the doorsteps, and I think some people voted SNP candidates because of the issue or misunderstanding what the issue was. I think that a lot of SNP supporters felt disillusioned and stayed at home.”
Nicolson’s comments came before Sturgeon gave her first TV interview since Murrell pleaded guilty to embezzling funds from the SNP.
She said: “He is serving and will be serving a sentence for a crime he committed. I'm out here feeling as if I'm serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit.”
Elsewhere, she insisted she did not know about or question some of her estranged husband’s more ostentatious purchases.
Sturgeon said she did not have “any conscious memory of seeing that motorhome” which Murrell had bought with pilfered funds and claimed she did not have reason to find his purchase of an £80,000 Jaguar suspicious.
