Severin Carrell

The judge himself spoke to the core fact that he had deliberately and very cleverly deceived so many people and betrayed a party and the party's membership.

We don't know exactly how long the sentence will be, but one could imagine he's going to face several years in jail.

Well, as we understand it, Nicola Sturgeon's writing a thriller at the moment.

She wants to have a literary career.

She's spoken previously a lot about wanting to move to London and just start a new life.

I mean, she said when she resigned, part of the reason she was resigning at this stage in her

chapter, enjoy later life and go on to do different things.

I mean, one can also, however, look at the book festival event in Northern Ireland a couple of nights before the Hay event, where she got, as I understand it, standing ovation from the crowd.

There are lots of people that still deeply admire Nicola Sturgeon and regard her as an icon.

I mean, she certainly had iconic status inside the Scottish National Party in the Yes movement.

It's difficult to know.

I mean, I think we'll just have to see how good the book is, won't we?

Yes, yes.

There are lots of questions that the SNP's opponents and critics believe that the SNP have to answer.

They are very, very, very confidently and bullishly pressing John Swinney and the SNP over the question about whether SNP members ought to be compensated.

John Swinney has pushed back very hard on that.

There's also the second question that the SNPs and opponents and rivals are pushing for some form of parliamentary inquiry at the Scottish Parliament and possibly even at Westminster.

Swinney is also resisting the parliamentary inquiry question.

The police investigation, which was called Operation Branch Form, which cost a couple of million pounds and involved tens of thousands of police hours, is itself the most robust and effective inquiry that one could expect to have in a situation like this.

I think the other question that they are going to face, however, and this is the more salient one, is the damage that this is going to do to the SNP's reputation.