{"id":624605,"date":"2026-06-06T15:37:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T15:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/624605\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T15:37:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T15:37:11","slug":"nicola-sturgeon-looked-broken-in-murrell-interview-says-humza-yousaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/624605\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicola Sturgeon looked &#8216;broken&#8217; in Murrell interview, says Humza Yousaf"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Yousaf <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-68918151\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">resigned as first minister<\/a> in April 2024, about 13 months after winning the leadership contest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said he did not question the spending at the time, noting he was serving as health secretary during the Covid pandemic for part of the period.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said his successor, John Swinney, was the right man to lead the SNP through the current period.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Swinney has repeatedly denied the need for a public inquiry, describing the police investigation as sufficient.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However he told MSPs on Thursday that the SNP may have claimed back tax on Murrell&#8217;s illicit purchases.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The SNP leader said his party had written to HMRC over the matter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Yousaf said Murrell&#8217;s stigma continues to follow the party.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said: &#8220;It was a very difficult time for the party, it kept coming up on the doorstep.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think the party is still finding it very difficult.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yousaf resigned as first minister in April 2024, about 13 months after winning the leadership contest. He said&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-624605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}