Scotland’s former first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is set to head on a ‘rehabilitation tour’ after being cleared in relation to Operation Branchform. It was confirmed on Thursday by the Crown Office that no further action will be taken against the former first minister and ex-SNP treasurer Colin Beattie, regarding the allegations that £600,000 of donations were spent fraudulently. Former party chief executive and Sturgeon’s enstranged husband, Peter Murrell, appeared in court on Thursday having been charged with embezzlement. He made no plea and was granted bail pending a further appearance.
Since the former leader stepped down from her position as first minister in 2023, her political career has taken a blow. However, sources close to Sturgeon say that she is on a mission to “rehabilitate” her image. On Saturday night, she was spotted at Glasglow Comedy Festival where she downplayed the Branchform situation, describing the past few years as “interesting” while thanking her supporters.
The former SNP leader is also due to release her first memoir in August and make an apperance at the Edinburgh Fringe – a performing arts festival.
One friend told the Sunday Times: “She has a book to sell, after all. Then there will be a splurge of apperances around the book launch and then signings after that.”
It comes as legal experts suggest that the public will never know what evidence Police Scotland held against Sturgeon which resulted in her initial arrest. She was questioned by detectives in June 2023 and two months later, both Murrell and Beattie were taken into custody.
The decision to not continue with the case against the former leader was taken by the Crown Office. One KC said: “The fact that hasn’t happened here makes me think the lack of the case against Nicola Sturgeon was fairly clear cut. It suggests it must have been reasonably clear that there was no prospect of providing any wrongdoing.”
However, another KC said: “What you can say is that the police believed they had reasonable grounds for suspecting she had comitted an offence, because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have the power to arrest her.”
In response to the news on Thursday, Nicola Sturgeon said: “All I can say is that I have done nothing wrong and I don’t think there was a scrap of evidence that I had done anything wrong. And therefore, of course, to have something like this hanging over me for almost two years now has been difficult, it’s been frustrating, and I don’t think I’m saying anything there that people would be surprised to hear.”
