Will the Sturgeon drama ask the right questions?

Share this article

Channel 5 has announced that it is preparing to dramatise the Peter Murrell embezzlement scandal. The 90-minute film will be made by Wonderhood Studios, whose most recent work was the well-received ‘Downfall’ about Huw Edwards. Not much is known about the production as yet, but those hoping for a deep dive into the complexities of the SNP’s financial scandals, or a serious examination of the Sturgeon years, should probably temper their expectations.

Comedian Susan Calman has emerged as the early favourite to play Sturgeon (disappointing those who took the rumours of Meghan Markle assuming the role seriously). Calman would be inspired casting as there is a physical resemblance, and the accent won’t be a problem. She also, like Sturgeon, trained as a lawyer (and unlike Sturgeon actually practiced). Amusingly, she also presented a series called ‘Secret Scotland’ and a travel show where she criss-crossed Scotland in a campervan. And as if that weren’t enough, Calman’s father Sir Kenneth was the intellectual force behind the 2009 Calman report aimed at strengthening the Union in a devolved Scotland.

We also know the working title of the film, ‘To Nicola, Love Peter’, and have been told that this will be an examination of the couple’s relationship from the point at which Peter Murrell started dipping into party funds to pay for a bizarre Generation Game conveyor belt of knick-nacks and bibelots – until his conviction for embezzlement and sentencing to five years in prison in June.

As to the tone of the piece, anyone expecting broad farce will likely be disappointed. ‘To Nicola, Love Peter’ will, it seems, be a serious affair with the treatment of the principals according to the press release, ‘nuanced and fair’. Channel 5 has said the drama will be an ‘epic tale of Shakespearean proportions’ that will ‘lift the lid on this extraordinary story and how it contributed to the downfall of one of the biggest political figures of a generation’.

Which makes me worried. That gushing blurb suggests screenwriter Lucy Bryden will emphasize Sturgeon’s ‘Queen of Scotland’ status to make her downfall more impactful. This is perfectly understandable from a dramatic point of view: a great leader, a political titan, the woman who was beloved by her people and could have broken up the UK, brought low by a pair of salt and pepper shakers, bought for her ‘with love’ by her troubled, eclipsed husband. Box office!

But if this is the way the TV drama goes, then ‘To Nicola with Love’ will be perpetuating the Sturgeon-centric myth so beloved of mainstream London-based media, and a gilt-edged opportunity to educate the public about what really went on not just in that house in Uddingstone, but in the corridors of power at Holyrood will have been missed.

For Sturgeon, far from the Caledonian Bismarck she is often depicted as, is, some would say, a vessel as empty as a not-fit-for-service Caledonian Macbrayne ferry. The ‘biggest political figure of her generation’? Neil Oliver, one of the few who had her number from the get-go, once scoffed that Nicola Sturgeon ‘was only big in the way Mr Blobby was big on Saturday night television, just loud’. In Shakespearean terms her career was, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.

But while Sturgeon herself may be a banal, grotesquely overexposed figure, her and her party’s baleful impact on Scotland and, to an extent, the UK, and why the public and the media enabled the process, is genuinely fascinating and urgently needs to be better understood.

The endless scandals, endless secrecy, endless failure and endless terrible ideas trumpeted by a cabal of hand-picked mediocrities while anyone with a modicum of talent and integrity (Joanna Cherry, Fergus Ewing, Kate Forbes et al.) were marginalised or excluded is surely a far more important story than one man’s pilfering and apparently compulsive comfort shopping on Amazon.

But even if the drama is to ignore all that and focuses just on the missing money, one hopes it will not ignore a crucial and seriously underreported aspect of the affair. For there are two allegations of embezzlement, not one. Peter Murrell has been sent to prison, but there remains a second, unresolved allegation: that the party misused donations ‘ring-fenced’ for a second referendum fund. Current First Minister John Swinney has confirmed that the money – more than £600,000, raised from donors between 2017 and 2019 – was in fact spent on the SNP’s general activities rather than kept for a referendum campaign. Yet no prosecution has followed, and no adequate explanation has been offered as to why.

The redoubtable Stu Campbell of Wings Over Scotland has been pursuing a lonely quest to get either Police Scotland or the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to explain why this has not led to a prosecution. Campbell argues, citing the case law on embezzlement, that the diversion of funds amounts to a clear crime, and that a proper investigation would establish who bears responsibility for it. He has come up against a brick wall of bureaucratic resistance thus far. Will the drama explore this, or even touch on it?

Wonderhood’s executive chair, David Abraham, has said that ‘To Nicola, Love Peter’: ‘reflects our growing ambition to develop quality dramas about contemporary stories that resonate with broad audiences’. I would have thought that the possibility that a government abused the trust of its grass roots supporters and conspired with the legal authorities to evade prosecution would fit the bill nicely.

We shall see…

Share this article