Severin Carrell

So this wasn't the behaviour of somebody hiding something.

It was the behaviour of somebody who wanted to defend themselves vigorously and put themselves up for what would be, for most people, a pretty harrowing experience of being tested and probed for 55 minutes on camera.

I think the first thing one has to remember is the extraordinary esteem that Nicola Sturgeon is held in by the vast majority of SNP members.

It was while she was deputy first minister and the effective leader of the Scottish independence campaign that the SNP's membership went up from the maybe 20,000, 25,000 people to as high as 130,000 under her leadership.

So there will be a significant gap.

amount of loyalty to her.

The point about whether members should be compensated, she will be resisting partly because it's an agenda which has been driven by her critics and enemies, not the party membership as a whole.

What one has to remember is the Peter Murrell prosecution is ongoing.

It

As part of that process, there will be a confiscation order where it's very likely that the prosecution will be asking the court to seize his assets and also the marital assets of Nicola Sturgeon herself, including the house that they shared outside Glasgow.

So she isn't actually escaping from this unscathed, one assumes.

John Swinney says that he believes her 100%.

And that's not surprising.

I mean, John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon were...

and remain extremely close friends.

Swinney was Nicola Sturgeon's closest political ally when she was First Minister.

He was Deputy First Minister throughout her term and literally would stand at her side during some of the more torrid media interviews that she had to give.

Swinney was asked by one journalist how he felt personally about the whole affair.

John Swinney has known Peter Murrell since they were teenagers.

They were both in the same boys' brigade troop in the west of Edinburgh.