You can choose your own analogy from history and mythology to portray what’s befallen Nicola Sturgeon, her estranged husband, Peter Murrell and the SNP this week. If you were being grandiose, perhaps the fall of Camelot and the decline of the Roman Empire. Maybe Charles Stewart Parnell and the Kitty O’Shea scandal, or ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson and the 1919 ‘Black Sox’ baseball disgrace if you were reaching for something more recent.

Let’s speak frankly here: Peter Murrell’s admission this week that he stole more than £400,000 from the party while being employed as its Chief Executive on a six-figure salary is the biggest political scandal in the history of Scottish and British politics. You simply can’t overstate how much damage this has done to Scotland’s international reputation and to the entire independence movement.

Not unreasonably, questions are being asked about whether or not Nicola Sturgeon had any inkling of her husband’s 13-year crime spree. Can she and the party maintain a defence of plausible deniability? The extent though, to which this affair has cut through to street level, may yet lead to an independent inquiry about the financial stewardship and oversight of Scotland’s party of government during several UK and Holyrood elections. In football terms, their opponents would be calling for a points deduction before the next season.

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One former member of the SNP’s National Executive Committee told me last night: “If John Swinney genuinely thinks there’s nothing more to be gained by holding an Inquiry, then he’s living on a different planet.”

Elements this week of the onslaught against Ms Sturgeon, who has always denied any knowledge of her husband’s crimes, have been unpleasant, vindictive and lit by fiery crosses. Some of those complaining about how sex-realist women latterly came to be treated inside the SNP have gleefully participated in mocking Ms Sturgeon’s physical appearance and her chosen career post-politics.

Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell (Image: PA)

It’s also averted attention from the other crucial element in this three-act tragedy. In the Alex Salmond years and in the early days of Nicola Sturgeon’s reign, the SNP........

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