Does Nicola Sturgeon Tell “Frankly” Fibs About Three Political “Casualties”?   – PART 3

I have now read Nicola Sturgeon’s Memoir, “Frankly”, and am disappointed that she leaves out so much.  One glaring omission is … me!  But, more later.   

Mark McDonald MSP

She does not even mention the unfortunate Mark McDonald MSP at all, the first Government minister casualty of her time as First Minister.  I had a soft spot for young Mark whom June and I met on the occasion of the royal visit in June 2011 when the then Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, gave an evening Holyrood Palace reception for all new MSPs.  That was fun!  And the second time was at the SNP Group Party the following December 2011 when we ran into him again.  I didn’t much like his brand of expletive-laden, stand-up comedian but he seemed to work so diligently and had a charisma that was so lacking in the other youthful, serious-minded SNP MSPs at the time.

And so it turned out to be.  Alex Salmond, the First Minister, appointed him soon after as Parliamentary Liaison Officer.  He served later as Parliamentary Liaison Officer for John Swinney, Deputy First Minister.  After the death of SNP Chief Whip, Brian Adam, in April 2013, he was selected by the SNP to run for the Brian’s former Constituency of Aberdeen Donside.  It would have been difficult to resign his “mere” Regional seat beforehand but he did so and he achieved his own constituency, although at a reduced majority.  Mark worked hard and in the May 2016 Scottish Election, he recorded a largest SNP majority in Sturgeon’s victory!  It was time for payback and he was rewarded with an appointment to the Scottish Government to serve as Minister for Childcare & Early Years.

All appeared fine but stories began circulating within the SNP  – although I was semi-detached member of the rumour machine, always on the receiving end – about his allegedly sexual language with certain members of his female colleagues.  It was about the time of “sexual misbehaviour” that was a growing concern at Westminster and, by extension, to Holyrood.  Mark resigned from his ministerial position in early November 2017 with a carefully worded letter to the First Minister saying that: “It has been brought to my attention that some of my previous actions have been considered to be inappropriate … ”.  What could they be?  But, it was a purely SNP matter, not a Scottish Government “complaint” apparently.  There was no Police involvement at all.  Later that month – when he was facing suspension from the SNP with referral to the Disciplinary Committee – he resigned from the Group of SNP MSPs.  Everyone piled in, including First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, saying he should resign his Parliamentary seat of Aberdeen Donside!  They do that sort of thing.  Mark continued as an independent Member of the Scottish Parliament until May 2021. 

It wasn’t over for Mark McDonald.  The following year, 2018, when the Parliamentary Standards Committee fined him a month’s salary as a punishment for sexual harassment by text against two women, although Mark appear to not have been furnished with evidence after “new SNP information about his behaviour came to light”.  This is at the time when the SNP Scottish Government was conducting an assassination attempt on the reputation of former First Minister, Alex Salmond, later rejected by the Court of Session and High Court.  How could Nicola Sturgeon not have “remembered” Mark McDonald, her first significant Government casualty of her reign in the Scottish Parliament?

In June 2021, Mark revealed that he had established a consultancy business – as many retiring MSPs do – following his departure from politics.  In August 2022, he announced that he had begun working for the pressure group, Scottish Autism, as their media and policy officer.

Derek Mackay MSP

Nicola Sturgeon could not “forget” Derek Mackay!  She affords the Derek Mackay MSP a passing mention, but of only two and a half pages in 464-page book “Frankly” in her time as First Minister of Scotland.

I first met Derek on our assessment date in June 2010, to be included as MSP candidates for the election the following year.  Aged 33, he was already Leader of Renfrewshire Council and had dropped out of university at age 21 to follow a life in politics.  He had also married young and had two young boys.  A man in a hurry, I thought, and he was now putting himself forward to be an MSP!  He gave a one-minute, hilarious presentation on a “blind topic” that he didn’t know anything about previously, delivering in a distinctive, Renfrewshire musical lilt.  It was brilliant, quite the outstanding feature of the all the MSP wannabes who spoke on a “blind topic”.

The second time I met him was in his office (at my suggestion), soon after we were both elected as MSPs.  Since the SNP were in control in Renfrewshire Council, did he have any tips to pass to me about Fife Council when we had joint control with the LibDems?  The “problem” was not with the LibDems, who were actually more bolshy than the SNP counterparts, but with the Council Chief Executive and his senior officer corps and getting them to do what the Fife Council (the elected councillors) decided.  Derek explained that, as a recently retired Council Leader, they had a regular Council “Cabinet” meeting on most Mondays, whereby any executive orders/questions were passed formally to Chief Executive and his officers … and that was it!  It seemed to be simple and I couldn’t appreciate the normally garrulous, but dogmatic Derek, taking “no” for an answer from oficers!  I passed my observations on Renfrewshire politician/officer relations onto my senior Fife Councillors in early course but, whether it made any difference, I leave the Fife Council observers to decide.

Derek Mackay continued to climb the greasy pole of SNP and Scottish Government politics together.  He achieved Chairman (Convener) of the SNP in June 2011 and Minister of the Scottish Government for Local Government and Planning soon thereafter – for which he was eminently qualified.  However, I was starting to change my mind on this “young Turk”. 

Not longer after, he was elevated to SNP Chairman.  He was in charge of 2011 Conference when he encountered Gerry Fisher, already nearing 80 years of age, who raised a point of order.  Gerry was a member of the “Awkward Squad” who regularly made to such points of order.  In fact, Nicola Sturgeon referred to him at one SNP National Assembly that I attended as “the guardian the Party’s Constitution and Rules”, humorously as I recall.  Derek reprimanded Gerry several times to such an extent that the live TV feeds were cut to the television people through in the adjacent room.  Not to save the Party from an embarrassing fisty-cuffs which had broken out between the floor and the chair, but the rather unseemly treatment, I thought, of the young Chairman and the elderly delegate member – who was old enough to be an SNP member before Derek was born – and seemed to be making reasonable points of order.

The second incident was just after the Derek Mackay had achieved ministerial status and he was entitled to the official driver to drive him home near Paisley from Holyrood duties.  He came into the bar of the Macdonald Holyrood Hotel one evening as he must have been staying overnight in Edinburgh.  His sole conversation that I do recall, was how the driver drove so slowly homeward!  Being among SNP MSPs, I volunteered that he must been observing the speed limits but Derek was having none of it as “he was driving so slowly!”  I shudder to think what the conversation would be like between the official driver and the minister.

The last time I met Derek Mackay was as Chairman/Convener of the SNP during 2012, when I was suspended from the Party.  He phoned me on my home land-line on Saturday, 24 March 2012 to enquire whether it would be possible to “deliver a Complaint against me” the following day, a Sunday.  As planned. he turned up at my house (in his own car!) at 12 noon the next day.  He presented me with a bound volume dated yesterday, entitled “Disciplinary Committee” and “Complaint”, plus six referenced sections, signed twice in a computer facsimile, by the National Secretary, William Henderson (whom I’ve never met before).

My wife, June, provided us with cups of tea/coffee and left us alone while I scanned through the bound volume. “This is rubbish!” I said. “It has nothing to do with my completing the Candidate Application form for which I had provided information about uncontested, divorce proceedings against me by two former wives in 1970 and 1986”, I protested.  (I had to take divorce proceedings against my third former wife in 1990s.)

Derek was flummoxed and said: “It’s powerful stuff”, changing the subject.  I said: “That’s got nothing to do with my filling in the form improperly”.  Derek changed complete tack, saying:

“Of course, there is one way out of this disciplinary procedure.  You could resign immediately (my emphasis) from the Party (and the SNP Group of MSPs), having never received that letter issued from the National Secretary, and that would be the end of it!  The Party HQ would not be taking any further action against you and you could stay an independent Member of the Scottish Parliament for Dunfermline.”

I was incensed as the Party HQ had received a malevolent, written Armstrong Complaint against me in February 2008 but completely failed to disclose that to me until after I had become an MSP in September 2011!  Nevertheless, I asked if I could think about overnight and he agreed.  After less than 45 minutes he left – not the joining an “SNP council of war”, as described in the Sunday Herald as I thought – but a return journey to his home in Paisley with his family for “domestic duties” he told me!

I discussed Derek’s proposal for rest of the day with June.  I had been an SNP member for 38 continuous years since 1974 and would not give up with a fight!  At the time there was no chance I would resign my Holyrood seat which I had served – and enjoyed – as a councillor and an MSP since 2007.  I slept on it and consulted my Constituency personal assistant (PA) and my solicitor the following day.  The SNP HQ had been particularly treacherous to me; having received the complaint against me in February 2008 and failed to disclose it to me, let me going through the complete, successful vetting process in 2010 and miserably failed to support me as an MSP, despite having been told my written defence against the Armstrong accusations rather belatedly – through no fault of my own.

I decided to fight against my suspension and expulsion from SNP.  Derek had provided me with his private mobile number (and I still have that note!) and I called in the late afternoon.  He was remarkably magnanimous when I told him that I would not accept his “offer of voluntary resignation” from the Party but would fight the case raised by the National Secretary.  The ball was then rolling for an appearance in front on the Disciplinary Committee.

What then happened to Derek Mackay?  He “came out” as a homosexual in 2013 and separated from his wife and two young boys soon thereafter.  So much for my “domestic duties”!  Nevertheless, Derek achieved, by a series of promotions, the status of Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work by 2018.  The First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, mentions him first on page 357 on “Frankly”, and allegedly pretended she did not know anything of his indiscretions or predilections up to 2020.  It came as ”a bolt out of the blue”, she said.  I, for one, don’t believe her.   

The evening before Derek was due to announce his budget on 06 Feb 2020, the First Minister was advised by a tabloid newspaper that they had uncovered social media messages of about 350 texts going back to six months ago, between her 43-year-old Finance Secretary and a sixteen-year-old schoolboy, originated by the older man (whom he called the schoolboy “really cute”).  Given the age difference and power imbalance between them, plus the impropriety of it all, Nicola did not fire him on the spot when they met.  Instead, she called the redoubtable and impressive Kate Forbes, his Deputy and the Public Finance Minister, to tell her she should be prepared to give the budget statement in the morning!  On page 357 she “admired his courage” when he separated from his ex-wife and two young sons but, according to the First Minister, Kate was “very concerned about him” but “she remained admirably calm”.  In my opinion, they should have reserved their concerns for his abandonment of his young wife and their two sons (according to Nicola, “Derek had come out as gay relatively late in life” at 36 years old), plus the pestering he was doing of the young schoolboy. (At one year younger, he, Derek Mackay,  would have appeared as a paedophile – as some jurisdictions, e.g. in the USA and some European countries provide.)  According to Nicola, “I had received and accepted Derek’s resignation (from the Finance Secretary’s position) within the hour”, although the Scottish Government had told the newpaper that it demands “full evidence” and “justification” for intruding into Mr Mackay’s private life(!). 

What was Derek’s “punishment” for bringing the Scottish Government into such disrepute?  He was immediately suspended by the SNP and a “disciplinary investigation”, including “my mental health and serving my constituents” launched, before he “resigned” from the SNP on 20 March 2020.  An SNP spokesperson said that “the resignation of Derek Mackay had brought the matter to a close” – a familiar route that Derek had once suggested to me in 2012!

However, there was a positive financial sting in tail as far as Derek was concerned.  Because he was still an MSP – and the SNP didn’t make much about it – he was still able to continue until May 2021, more in a year in advance, although he didn’t attend the Holyrood Parliament once at the time.  He got £80,000 gross for that.  Also, he was awarded a “resettlement grant” of more than £65,000 (£30,000 tax-free), £11,945 severance-style payment for leaving his ministerial post, Edinburgh flat accommodation costs of £5,000 and miscellaneous “office expenses” of around £12,000.  All taxpayer-paid, of course, and not bad for “resettling” a 43-year-old.  Nicola doesn’t mention this in her Memoir, possibly because she’s been milking the system dry since April 2023 and she’ll get a giant-sized resettlement grant etc – of six figures proportions – when she eventually “retires” from the Glasgow Constituency after May 2026.      

Bill Walker MSP

You’ve guessed it – there is no mention of me in “Frankly”!  Modesty aside, not only was I suspended from the SNP, but later resigned my MSP Constituency seat of Dunfermline in 2013, the pinnacle of my later life.  This was during the Deputy Leadership of Nicola Sturgeon but no mention of this fact in the book.  She and her husband Peter Murrell, the Chief Executive of the Party at the time, played a major part of my Dunfermline resignation.  I have read that Nicola is planning a “chunky new chapter” for the paperback “Frankly”, due to be published in August.  Among the fiction, may I suggest she addresses the following realities?

• I have read a lot about Nicola, including two previous biographies by the writer (not the MSP) David Torrance (“Nicola Sturgeon: A Political Life”) published in 2015, and by Ian Mitchell (“Nicola Sturgeon, Vol 1: The Years of Ascent”) in 2022.  She also earns a mention in the seminal, last work by that great Nationalist Gordon Wilson (“Scotland: The Battle for Independence – A History of the Scottish National Party 1990-2014”) published in 2014.  These three authors mention me in their writings but never Nicola Sturgeon!  Is it because it is too “embarrassing”, as David Torrance states, or is it because she is trying to cover up two monumental blunders she made in 2008?  On 27 Feb 2008, Robin Armstrong came into her Constituency Office to complain about Cllr Bill Walker, recently elected to Fife Council.  Nicola wasn’t there (allegedly) and he met Mhairi Hunter – a long-time SNP compadre, former election agent, future Glasgow councillor and currently constituency office manager of Nicola.  Mhairi wrote a report to Peter Murrell that the very day about my “marital misdemeanours” against my two former wives. It is a pity that it took almost four years for the SNP HQ to admit that an allegedly serious complaint had been disclosed to me by Ian McCann in 2011, the Corporate Governance and Compliance Manager.  Didn’t Nicola Sturgeon and Mhairi Hunter “chat to each other” in the Constituency Office and, worse still, didn’t Nicola deserve to be told about the serious complaint that had been received by Peter Murrell about Bill Walker, recently elected to Fife Council?  Did not Nicola and Peter share such stories, even “pillow talk”, between themselves?  After all, they have been living together for the best part of ten years. 
• If I had known beforehand, I certainly would have taken legal action against the “complainer”, Robin Armstrong, and would not have stood, successfully as it happens in 2011, as an MSP in Dunfermline.  Such is the “black arts” practised by SNP HQ!  Yet, I invited the “SNP golden couple”, Nicola and Peter, to be our guests-of-honour at our Dunfermline SNP Branch in our grand Burns Supper in 2012.  Not a word was said about the Armstrong Complaint to me by either of these, including the morning of the event itself, when Nicola texted me to tell me she had been fighting a “head cold all week – and it was getting worse!”  On reflection, I should have known that she was trying to get out of it, due to media explosion was about to take place a month later but I was only thinking of the catastrophe that was happening to the Branch Burns Supper.  She seemed to have, in fact, recovered on the evening itself with Nicola posing for many “selfies”, including the infamous one with me, with her hand round my neck, as published on my blog!  The evening went “swimmingly well” as Peter Murrell reminded me the next day in an email: “We both enjoyed it!!” – as recorded in Volume 2 of my own Memoirs.  Strange that it is not recorded in “Frankly”.
• The next time I ever spoke to Peter Murrell was a few weeks later on 03 Mar 2012.  To recap, I had an afternoon meeting with Cabinet Member, Bruce Crawford MSP, in my Dunfermline Constituency Office, about the Sunday Herald which it intending publishing the next day.  The meeting went well and he asked me when I would be that evening.  I replied “at home” and, rather naively, I thought it would be the SNP rebutting the story that the Sunday Herald was proposing to run!  When he, Peter Murrell, an employee on the Party, phoned me at 8:30pm at my home to tell me that that I was being suspended immediately (by the National Secretary whom I had never met) and was being referred to Disciplinary Committee at once – something unheard of in the case of Mark McDonald MSP and Derek Mackay MSP as above.  Peter Murrell had read the report about the “Armstrong Complaint” almost four years ago, but not sent a copy on to me, or otherwise informed me, leaving me in the dark for years.  The Sunday Herald article appeared  next day on 04 Mar 2012.
• To compound it, Nicola tried to cover it up, after the BBC TV News ran an interview story when Robin Armstrong came into her Constituency Office, by claiming later that in 2012 Mhairi Hunter had decided that it was a “Party matter” in 2008 (not a Council nor later Parliamentary topic) and contacted SNP HQ directly, via Peter Murrell (her husband) and it wasn’t anything to do with her, Nicola!  Amazingly, neither Mhairi nor Peter mentioner the “complaint” at all to her.  It strains credulity to the limit.  Of course, as a political colleague said at the time: “The male members of the mainstream media (MSM) were in love with Nicola, so preferred to hear her dulcet, apparently credible tones forever, rather than be exposed as a liar!”
• Between 2020 and 2022, I made a formal “Subject Access Request”(SAR) to the SNP HQ under “Freedom of Information”(FoI) legislation to check whether the SNP HQ had the personal SNP information I had in various files.  This was to be included in Volume 2 (and the future Volume 3) of my Trilogy.  This involved Peter Murrell, Ian McCann and the SNP Data Protection Officer, Scott Martin, a qualified solicitor.  When I was speaking to Scott Martin in January 2021 he confessed that he “was clearing out the files, going back to Alex Salmond was a suspended member of the shorted-lived 79 Group” … in 1979!  I don’t have a note of whom told him to do the shredding.  When he had asked me what information that I wished, I said “everything which concerns me!”  After a few weeks, I received a “response” from the SNP which consisted of few receipts when I had contributed to the SNP over the years but no information of my MSP vetting, a copy of the Armstrong Complaint (and my replies to Ian McCann), my Expulsion, appearance in front the Disciplinary Committee etc.  Apparently, Scott had made all the personal information “disappear”!  I had to bear in mind that I was up against the most powerful couple in Scotland – Nicola Sturgeon, SNP Leader and First Minister of Scotland, and her husband, Peter Murrell, Chief Executive of the governing party, the SNP.  It was time to bring in the “big guns”. 
• That seemed to work.  I contacted a couple of legally-qualified, Scottish MPs, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office(ICO) and three case officers.  Amazingly, the SNP eventually produced a bigger dossier of over 130 pages on 16 Dec 2021!  There was none of the material I had requested, cited in the previously paragraph (which I had copies of anyway), but additional “interesting” material on the how the hierarchy had “investigated” the Armstrong Complaint in 2008 and more recently tried to cover it up!  Scott Martin declared in a covering letter that the Party did not my “hold” any further information about me.  The SNP document shredder must have been working overtime.  I reported the “missing material” to the ICO who wrote to the SNP on the 25 Feb 2022, in terms of the SAR did not satisfy them, that:

“It is our view that further work is necessary.”

It wasn’t until 06 Jun 2022 that I was advised by the ICO, that the Party, through the SNP Data Protection Officer, Scott Martin, officially admitted that it did not hold [further] “electronic copies” and that further “paper documentation did not exist” about my case.  I thanked the ICO (and his case officers) and was pleasantly to receive an ICO email which formally stated:

“However, be assured that the case will remain on our systems, and should regulatory action be considered in the future against the SNP, your case may from part of the intelligence against them.”

I was happy at that as the ICO, in my opinion, had noted the deviousness and evasion of the SNP under Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell. 

May I suggest that Nicola Sturgeon might be planning a “chunky new chapter” for the paperback “Frankly”, due to be published in August, but is she telling the truth – but ignoring omissions – about some of the realities above?  Over to you, Nicola!

References

1.  William G Walker, “Bill Walker: My Story, Vol. 1 – A Private and Professional Life”, Amazon Books, 2017

2.  William G Walker, “Bill Walker: My Story, Vol. 2 – SNP Politics in My Life”, Amazon Books, 2025

3.  William G Walker, “Bill Walker: My Story, Vol. 3 – Is This Justice?”, in preparation

4.  Blog – www.billwalkerdunfermline.com

5.  Email – williamgeorgewalker@gmail.com

Slainte,

Bill Walker

Former MSP for Dunfermline (2011-13)