Scotland’s Sturgeon arrested

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Scotland’s Sturgeon arrested’

Marc Filippino 
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, June 12th, and this is your FT News Briefing. 

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Marc Filippino
We have got a whole show about former heads of state and the trouble they’ve got themselves in. First, Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon has been arrested. And then a look at why former UK prime minister Boris Johnson quit parliament. Plus, federal prosecutors in the US charged Donald Trump with 37 criminal counts in a classified documents case. We’ll talk about what it might mean as he runs for president again. I’m Marc Filippino and here’s the news you need to start your day. 

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Marc Filippino
Police arrested the former head of the Scottish National Party yesterday. Nicola Sturgeon stepped down as first minister in February and she was taken into custody on Sunday as part of a wider investigation into the SNP’s finances. She was questioned and released without charges. Sturgeon tweeted, “I know beyond doubt that I am innocent of any wrongdoing.” Authorities started investigating the SNP’s finances in 2021. Donors claimed that more than half a million pounds given to the SNP during Scotland’s UK independence referendum were spent on other things. Here’s the FT’s Lukanyo Mnyanda with what Sturgeon’s arrest means for the party. 

Lukanyo Mnyanda 
It’s a difficult day, that’s for sure. Since Humza Yousaf has become First Minister, he’s been really trying to steady the ship, trying to get the party on the front foot on the policy issues. But his time in office has been dogged by these controversies that that predate him. And this is just something else that’s just going to overshadow everything. Obviously, we can’t pronounce the long-term ramifications are. And SNP, while it still remains the biggest party in Scotland, it has been shedding support because of this drip of negative headlines for the last two or three months or so. So this can only hurt it. And I think for people in the Labour Party especially, they smell an opportunity here. Even though the SNP is quite far ahead in the polls still, that gap has been narrowing. 

Marc Filippino 
And Lukanyo says that Yousaf will have a hard time separating himself from Sturgeon. 

Lukanyo Mnyanda 
He was seen as the continuity candidate. He spent a lot of his campaign praising her record. So he’s very much somebody who was seen to be close to her, and he hasn’t done anything to disavow people of that perception. So her arrest, it does put things closer to his door, makes it hard for him to move on because he’s been trying to move on the party and the country. Saying, I want to start my own agenda. I want to be judged on how we deliver for Scotland, how we can deliver independence without the destruction of having to deal with legacy issues. But he can’t get away from the legacy issues because he’s actually like a political ally of Nicola Sturgeon. So it would not be easy for him to distance himself from her. 

Marc Filippino 
Lukanyo Mnyanda is the FT’s Scotland correspondent. 

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Marc Filippino
Now let’s turn to the former head of the UK. Boris Johnson quit parliament last week. Not only did he leave, but two other conservatives decided to step down as well. Now these exits, they create a headache for current prime minister Rishi Sunak and his party. Here to explain is the FT’s Lucy Fisher. She’s our Whitehall editor and the host of our Political Fix podcast. Hi, Lucy. 

Lucy Fisher 
Hi, Mark. 

Marc Filippino 
Alright, so why exactly is Boris Johnson leaving parliament? I think I understand that it has something to do with party gate. 

Lucy Fisher 
Well, exactly. There are two main reasons. The first and primary factor is that last week he was given the draft findings of a parliamentary inquiry into whether he lied to Parliament about the lockdown busting parties that happened in Downing Street during the pandemic. So the strong suspicion is that this inquiry told him it was going to sanction him in such a way that it could have led to a by-election and him being ousted from parliament anyway. So it looks like he has seized the initiative and decided to step down on his own terms. I mentioned there were two factors. The second factor is also around several of his parliamentary allies. He had promised peerages to. It looks like there was wrangling between his team and the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak’s team and that several of those candidates weren’t awarded peerages last week. So that’s a secondary factor. 

Marc Filippino 
Right and peerage for folks outside the UK, peerage is an honorific that gives someone the title of Lord and lets them sit in Parliament’s second chamber of the House of Lords. Now, Lucy, two other Johnson allies, stepped down along with him, Nigel Adams and Nadine Dorries, which means there will be three elections in the upcoming weeks to fill these vacancies. What does this mean for the Conservative Party? 

Lucy Fisher 
The Conservative Party is lagging Labour quite significantly right now. They’re not faring great in the polls. Boris Johnson’s seat is going to be very tight. There’s a lot of speculation that Labour could well walk that. The other two seats have much more comfortable majorities in a normal general election. Indeed, they would be considered safe Tory seats, but by-elections have this strange, unpredictable dynamic and often produce upsets and I think the Conservative Party could be under pressure. It’s a real problem for Rishi Sunak if he loses one and a huge problem if he loses all three seats. 

Marc Filippino 
Is this kind of a preview to the general election that’s going to happen next year? 

Lucy Fisher 
Well, as I say, by-elections have their own strange energy. Campaigners from around the country can descend on them. So I don’t think you can necessarily read across to a general election. But what you can say is the breakdown of discipline, the infighting in the Conservative Party that has ramped up since Boris Johnson resigned last week. That, I think, is something that’s potentially going to grow. And if there’s a truism of British politics, it’s that divided parties don’t win elections. So the more the conservatives fight, the more likely it is it’s a foregone conclusion that they lose next year. 

Marc Filippino 
What about Boris Johnson? What is he doing after this? 

Lucy Fisher 
Well, look, he warned when he stepped down last week that he was leaving parliament for now. So there’s a lot of speculation that he might yet try and get a safe seat in a different constituency at the next election. Before that, however, there’s a lot of talk of him going and doing more journalism and even talk of him getting involved in a TV show. So we’ll be on the lookout for that. But in the meantime, I’m sure he’ll be keeping up with his lucrative speaking gigs.  

Marc Filippino 
Lucy Fisher is the FT’s Whitehall editor. Thanks, Lucy. 

Lucy Fisher 
Thanks, Mark. 

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Marc Filippino 
Donald Trump will appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday, making him the first former US president to face federal criminal charges. Prosecutors on Friday unsealed an indictment charging Trump with 37 criminal counts. Most of the charges directly accused Trump of improperly holding on to highly classified documents all around his Mar-a-Lago estate. Just a reminder that all this comes after he was indicted separately by Manhattan’s district attorney earlier this year. In that case, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Here’s the FT’s Lauren Fedor. 

Lauren Fedor 
Gosh, you know, it’s amazing that we’re talking about a second indictment here. You know, just a couple of months ago, it was unprecedented for a former president to be facing criminal charges. And now we have a former president facing another batch of criminal charges. And if you can harken back to that first batch in New York, there was a lot of scepticism from across the political aisle. There are certainly people who are defending the efforts of the prosecutor in New York, but there were also a lot of people who were questioning his legal argument and whether or not he had a case against Trump. In that case, that was the hush money case relating to allegedly falsifying business records. Now, fast forward to this case that we’ve just learned about, and it seems like there is a consensus that this is a much bigger deal. It is a more damning indictment. It has to do with matters of national security. And it looks like Trump is going to have a pretty difficult road ahead. 

Marc Filippino 
Now, Lauren, the trial for Trump’s hush money charges is scheduled to be going on during the primary election season. Then there’s a chance that this one could also happen during that time, which means there’s some logistical challenges for him as he runs for president. But what else do we know about how this indictment and other legal problems are influencing how voters view him? 

Lauren Fedor 
Well, you know, in one sense, it is too early to say. I imagine in the coming days we’ll have some fresh polling data based on polls that are going to be conducted around right now, basically getting a sense of how people have reacted to this latest indictment. That said, we do know that perhaps counterintuitively, the first indictment that Trump faced earlier this year actually supercharged his campaign. We can look back on polls and see that his approval with the Republican grassroots and those people who are the ones who are going to be selecting the party’s nominee for 2024. He surged with them after he was indicted. I was up in New Hampshire earlier in the month, and I spoke to some Republican voters. They thought Trump was being unfairly attacked and they wanted him to stand up to what they thought was an unfair persecution. I mean, they’re repeating that in many cases unfounded claims that he himself makes. But, you know, it resonates with those people and those people will vote in the primaries. 

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Marc Filippino 
Lauren Fedor is the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief. 

Marc Filippino
You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news. 

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