Trust no more!

I find the accounts given by Allison Graham and Cynthia Guthrie perfectly credible. I don’t believe a word John Swinney says because I know him to be a liar. For example, he lied when he said he could guarantee a referendum. It only takes one lie to make a liar.

I am no more enamoured of the Tories than any other left-leaning Scottish nationalist. But it is a fact that John Swinney repeatedly claimed that the SNP’s finances were sound when we know that this was not the case. He lied.

Some of Swinney’s lies are more subtle. Dishonesty comes in many forms. One example will serve to make the point. To hear Swinney talk now, you would never know that prior to the election he stated that only an outright SNP-only majority would constitute a mandate for a referendum. Albeit a referendum he had no way of delivering. To hear him now, you’d think he’d said all along that a multi-party (nominally) pro-independence majority would be sufficient.

Dumb party loyalists are happy to go along with this deceit. I am not. They put party and personality before cause and country. I do not.

John Swinney responded to Russel Findlay saying:

The comments Russell Findlay makes about me are baseless, utterly and totally baseless.

Let’s look at what Findlay said, as reported in The National.

Speaking during First Minister’s Questions at Holyrood on Thursday, Findlay said the two women had spoken out but “Nicola Sturgeon ordered them to be quiet”, while “John Swinney assured them there was no problem” and the Scottish Government’s new victims minister, Kirsten Oswald, had “tried to bully these whistleblowers into silence”.

There is a leaked video which shows Sturgeon dismissing concerns about the party’s finances. Not everyone will recognise the threatening tone to Sturgeon’s remarks. However, it will be instantly recognisable to many who were in the party during the period from 2016 to 2019. I was certainly aware of the way the atmosphere at the party conferences changed then. I saw the ways in which the clique around Sturgeon sought to stifle all criticism of the leadership. I cannot do other than listen to Sturgeon in that video, mindful of the context supplied by personal experience.

Russell Findlay is an arse. But even an arse can say things which are true. Party loyalists will dismiss what he says without even considering whether or to what extent he is stating facts.

What else did he say?

The truth is Peter Murrell should never have been free to commit these crimes.

Members of the SNP finance and audit committee blew the whistle but they were bullied into quitting after being refused access to basic information.

John Swinney twice went on to the BBC to say that his party’s finances were completely sound.

He was at the heart of the cover-up, then and now, and that is why he is terrified of an inquiry.

That Murrell “should never have been free to commit these crimes“ is a given. But Swinney drew no distinction between this point and others made by Findlay. His protestations rejected everything the Tory leader said. We may assume that Swinney didn’t intend to reject the idea that Murrell shouldn’t have been able to steal large sums over a period of years. But he said what he said. If it’s not what he meant to say, he shouldn’t have said it.

That “members of the SNP finance and audit committee blew the whistle but they were bullied into quitting after being refused access to basic information” is true. The only possible question mark concerns the claims of bullying. But it is a fact that the treasurer and three members of the finance and audit committee resigned, and it is a fact that being denied access to “basic information” was given as a reason.

What, then, are we to make of Swinney’s claim that this is “baseless, utterly and totally baseless“? It is patently not true to say that the remarks are baseless. One may question the bit about bullying, as this can often be subjective. But there are objectively factual aspects which Swinney simply brushes aside along with the complaint of intimidation. Correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t all claims of bullying in the workplace supposed to be investigated? Maybe John Swinney didn’t get that memo.

I can’t confirm that “John Swinney twice went on to the BBC to say that his party’s finances were completely sound“ with direct evidence, such as links to a record of both occasions. But it’s irrelevant, as we know from the video mentioned above that this was Sturgeon’s position; therefore, it had to be Swinney’s position also, him being her deputy. Whether Swinney went on the BBC to state this position twice or once or a dozen times makes no difference to the fact that the leadership of the party was claiming the SNP’s finances were sound when they were anything but.

John Swinney says the allegation that he called the party’s finances sound is “baseless”. It isn’t. He’s lying.

Swinney also dismisses the claims of a cover-up made by Findlay. It’s not clear whether Findlay’s referring to Murrell’s crimes or the ‘missing’ ring-fenced funds, or both. Again, however, the allegation is perfectly credible just on the basis of the SNP’s record in such matters. In this, they are little different from other political parties. As a general rule, they are all inclined to try and hide their misdeeds. If Findlay is accusing Swinney and Sturgeon of deliberately concealing Murrell’s activities, that would be a very serious allegation indeed. I doubt if Findlay would make such an allegation absent the immunity of parliamentary privilege. Unless he had proof that Sturgeon and Swinney knew what Murrell was doing, he’d doubtless find himself on the expensive end of a defamation action.

But if the allegation is merely that the two top people in the party were lying when they claimed the SNP’s finances were sound, then it is just plain wrong to say that this allegation is baseless. We know as a matter of fact that the party’s finances were not sound at the time Swinney and Sturgeon were insisting that they were. They were both lying. Or they were oblivious to the issues even after the resignations of the treasurer, three members of the oversight committee, and a senior elected member of the party.

Swinney would have us believe this spate of resignations rang no alarm bells. They would have us accept the line that all these high-profile resignees were just ‘traitors’ and leave it at that. His spluttering, self-righteous indignation in response to Findlay’s remarks was a good act. But that’s all it was. There was no refutation of the allegations. No rebuttal. No counterargument whatever. He knows that he need only label the allegations “baseless”, and this will be enough for the party loyalists and apologists. He knows he can rely on them to shout down those who point out his lies and deceit.

Swinney says, “The comments Russell Findlay makes about me are baseless, utterly and totally baseless.” That is simply false. It is untrue. It is a lie. Even if I am the only one prepared to do so, I will continue to call out these lies for as long as I am able.

I’ll finish with what is perhaps the biggest lie of them all. Look at what Swinney said when questioned about the £667,000 that was supposed to be ring-fenced for the specific purpose of a second independence referendum campaign.

Asked how the fund has been used, Swinney told Bauer: “That money is part of the resources that are available to the SNP to support its independence objectives and the SNP is the party of independence and that’s what we campaign for.”

Asked if all of the money had been spent, he replied: “I’m saying it’s part of the ongoing activities of the Scottish National Party.

“We’re the party that campaigns for independence. We just fought an election campaign in which we had a very, very strong anchoring of our campaign for independence.

“If that’s not the use of the resources then I’m not sure I understand what the resources are for.”

Bear in mind that donors to the fund in question were led to believe that the money they were donating was to be kept in reserve in order to fund a Yes campaign in a referendum promised by Nicola Sturgeon but, of course, never delivered. There was no referendum. Therefore, there was no campaign. Therefore, the funds reserved for that campaign should still be in whatever place they had been ring-fenced.

‘Ring-fenced’ means protected and only able to be used for a particular purpose. That £667,000 could not have been spent on the intended purpose because that purpose never arose. If it was protected, it must still exist. But, when people started enquiring as to the whereabouts of this ‘protected’ money, all they got from the party leadership was prevaricating waffle.

Either the SNP leadership were lying when they said the money was ring-fenced, or Swinney is being sleekitly deceitful when he talks of it as “part of the resources that are available to the SNP to support its independence objectives“. That is not what people were told when they donated. Once again, we find Sinney rewriting history. Just as he now pretends he didn’t say only votes for the SNP would count as a mandate for a referendum he couldn’t deliver but guaranteed to do so anyway, so in the passage quoted above, he is pretending that the SNP leadership never said the fund was ring-fenced for a referendum campaign. The dishonesty just drips off this guy!

One final point. Swinney says the money (£667,000) was spent pursuing the objective of independence. Had I been conducting that interview, I would have asked him what he had to show for this expenditure. He’s saying the £667,000 was spent on the effort to restore Scotland’s independence. But that effort has made precisely no progress. If the SNP are incapable of making headway on the constitutional issue with that kind of funding, why should we believe they will ever make any headway?

The independence movement has thrown money at the SNP on the basis of them being the ‘party of independence’. We have literally showered them with cash and mandates and power. And we have absolutely nothing to show for it.

I would have to be pathologically credulous to believe anything John Swinney said. I’d have to be quite insane to trust him.