The Scottish National party’s chief executive, who is also the husband of first minister and party leader Nicola Sturgeon, on Tuesday dismissed suggestions he was part of a plot against her predecessor, Alex Salmond.
Peter Murrell, who has been the SNP’s top administrator for 20 years and Ms Sturgeon’s husband for 10, told a Scottish parliament committee he very much regretted the wording of a 2019 text message in which he suggested it would be good to be “pressurising” police over accusations of sexual misconduct by Mr Salmond.
Mr Murrell was making a rare appearance in the political spotlight as part of an inquiry into the Scottish government’s handling of complaints against Mr Salmond, a process that comes amid increasing tensions within the governing SNP ahead of Scottish parliamentary elections in May that could be crucial to the constitutional future of the UK.
Mr Salmond was in March acquitted at the High Court in Edinburgh of all of 13 sexual…