Andrew Bowie is a former Energy Minister and currently the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland.
It’s that classic riddle, what does a bald man do with a hairdryer?
It’s a question that people, not just across Scotland but across the whole of the United Kingdom, have been asking since the extraordinary guilty plea of Peter Murrell, the former SNP Chief Executive and husband of Nicola Sturgeon, to embezzlement.
The version of events we are all being asked to believe is that, despite ruling the SNP with an iron fist, Sturgeon did not know that her husband was squandering donated, perhaps even public, money on two cars, a motorhome, more coffee machines than you would ever need, and a hairdryer, to name just a few items on Murrell’s shopping list.
The best that even the staunchest of Sturgeon supporters can offer in the way of a defence came from Ian Blackford, the former SNP Westminster Group, who said on Times Radio that poor old Nicola couldn’t have known about £400,000 going missing from her party’s coffers because never went into the kitchen as “she doesn’t have a passion for cooking”.
Well, that clears that up.
The problem for the SNP is not just that no one believes Nicola Sturgeon didn’t know, it is that this risks becoming yet another in a long line of scandals over which the SNP have presided.
Because we live in the SNP’s Secret Scotland: a Scotland where the Salmond Files still haven’t been published, a Scotland where the victims of the scandal at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital had to wait years for answers.
This cannot be allowed to become another scandal swept under the carpet to save the SNP’s blushes. We need an inquiry.
John Swinney has already ruled out a Scottish Parliament inquiry, instead deciding to deflect and distract Holyrood with a pointless debate on independence.
That’s why I have urged Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee to hold an inquiry into the embezzlement scandal engulfing the top of the SNP. I would urge Labour MPs to back our calls, for they themselves know that they cannot afford another cover-up on their watch.
Because whilst the Scottish Parliament elections are over, on 18 June tens of thousands of voters in Scotland will still have the chance to go to the polls in the Westminster by-elections in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry and Aberdeen South.
I’ve spent most of my life in and around the Granite City, but after 19 years of an SNP Government in Holyrood and just two years of a disastrous Labour Government in Westminster, the once-great city is starting to look a shadow of its former self.
That is, of course, in no small part because of Labour and the SNP’s nonsensical approach to our oil and gas industry.
When I talk about the Oil and Gas industry, I am not just talking about the thousands of offshore jobs- on rigs out at sea for weeks at a time. But also, the tens of thousands of onshore jobs. In the support industry, the supply chain and all those jobs from hospitality to retail to taxi drivers relying on a profitable, growing sector underpinning the economy of the North East.
Everyone knows someone working in the industry. Everyone knows someone being made unemployed or having to make that awful choice to move their family, their whole life, overseas where their skillset and experience is still valued. Because under Ed Miliband, it isn’t at home.
It doesn’t have to be this way, and that is why the by-election in Aberdeen South is a referendum on the future of our oil and gas sector. It’s a straight choice between Douglas Lumsden, who spent years working in the oil and gas sector, and the SNP.
It’s a choice between a party with a plan to Get Britain Drilling and one that is ambivalent, at best, towards the industry that helped build Aberdeen.
If every pro-UK and pro-North Sea oil and gas voter in Aberdeen South lends their vote to Douglas Lumsden, then we can beat the the SNP and send Ed Miliband a message.
On 18 June, the people of Aberdeen South can say enough to the sleaze, scandal and cover-up of the SNP. They can reject Ed Miliband’s net zero madness and elect Douglas Lumsden to save Aberdeen and Get Britain Drilling.