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Hello and welcome to Coffey House Scots.

I'm Lucy Dunn and I'm joined today by Ian McWirter, callingist at The Times and a writer at The Spectator and Shona Craven, Columnist at the National.

So it's been a busy week for the Scottish Government, what with question marks over the future of Scotland's Tartan-Tavestock clinic,

the Zandeford, the Green Pledge U-turn and of course the news of Peter Murrell's

arrest and charge yesterday, embezzlement of SMP funds. So first of all you know turn to you

you've written a piece on Marl's arrest for coffee house what does this latest

development mean for the SMP?

Well, I mean, it's obviously catastrophic to have this taint of criminality hanging over the

party as it prepares propelled into this very difficult general election.

I mean there's so many things going wrong at once for Hansa Youssef that perhaps, you know,

this seems to be just another of them, but I think it is of a different order really.

I mean, it's so shocking. I don't think anybody, certainly nobody in the, in and around,

Scottish politics and journalism.

Now I've been very careful what I say here because we're under the rules of content of court.

But I can just say that it's come as a great shock that

but profound shock that someone who's being such a pivotal figure in

naturalist politics over the last 20 years

mainly in the back room and also, of course,

...