The SNP’s fundraising efforts and election hopes have been badly damaged by the police investigation into the party’s finances, i has been told.
The party fears donors will continue to stay away in the run-up to the general election, expected in the autumn, after the latest development in the Operation Branchform probe.
Former chief executive Peter Murrell, the husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, was charged in connection with embezzlement of SNP funds on Thursday.
A SNP source told i that donations had “dried up” under Humza Yousaf’s leadership – with the investigation, which was launched in 2021, a major factor in turning off wealthy individuals.
“There’s no doubt that [Operation] Branchform and the stink around it has damaged the ability to get in big donations,” they said. “It’s been a nightmare. The money from the business sector has dried up. It’s a challenge we’re going to continue to face.”
The source said some of the major controversies since Mr Yousaf took over from Ms Sturgeon in March last year – including criticism for the recently introduced hate crime law – had also sapped enthusiasm from traditional backers. “The decline in big donations has got worse under Humza. Fiascos like the gender self-ID bill and the hate crime bill have had a negative impact on donations and membership.”
The SNP has received just £77,000 in major donations in the year since Mr Humza took charge, Electoral Commission records show. Just one living person has given to the party in that time, with the bulk of the money coming from dead supporters’ wills.
It represents a sharp decline in donations. The SNP raked in just over £4.2m during Ms Sturgeon’s eight years and four months in charge, according to an i analysis of Electoral Commission records. The party received just over £8m during Alex Salmond’s 10-year stint as SNP leader.
The SNP’s latest annual accounts, revealed in autumn 2023, showed the party suffered a loss of £804,000 during 2022. It followed a loss of £732,000 the previous year. Meanwhile, membership has reportedly plummeted to 69,000, a substantial fall from its 2019 peak of 125,000.
The SNP source said the party was facing “a difficult financial situation” just as it gears up for the election: “In order to shore up the central headquarters finances, local branches won’t have that money to spend on the election.
“If we’re looking to target around 20 constituencies to save them from Labour, the amount we can spend on each is substantially reduced on what we could normally do.”
Mr Yousaf said on Friday that the charge against Mr Murrell was a “really serious matter indeed”. The SNP leader confirmed his old colleague had resigned his membership.
Ms Sturgeon described the situation as “incredibly difficult”, but appealed for privacy as she spoke outside the couple’s home in Glasgow on Friday.
The charge is part of a probe into the spending of more than £600,000 in donations that were earmarked specifically for Scottish independence campaigning. The saga also saw Ms Sturgeon arrested and questioned, before being released without charge, in June 2023.
Angus MacNeil MP, expelled from the SNP last year after falling out with party chiefs, said the probe had put off financial backers in recent years. “Whenever I spoke to people who might have donated, the police investigation was a factor,” he told i.
The Western Isles MP, who is standing as an independent, added: “You’re unlikely to have people donating to a party whose former chief executive has been charged with embezzlement.”
Polling expert Mark Diffley, founder of The Diffley Partnership, said surveys suggest that the police investigation badly damaged the party in the months after Mr Murrell’s initial arrest in April 2023.
He told i: “The most significant poll declines were around Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation, the first Peter Murrell arrest, the police tents in their garden, Sturgeon getting arrested.
“Mr Yousaf has struggled to get on the front foot. The backdrop was already gloomy and yesterday’s news will do nothing to ease that. Depending how long it continues to drag out, it makes his job harder.”
Mr Diffley thinks the SNP could lose over half its 43 seats in the worst-case election scenario. He said recent polling suggested the party was on course to win somewhere between 20 and 30 seats, while Scottish Labour could move up from just two seats to somewhere between 20 and 30.
A SNP spokesperson said the party was “proud to be overwhelmingly funded by our ordinary members who want to see a better future for Scotland as an independent country”.
'President Musk' is flexing his muscles and revealing how weak Trump is