Lies and corruption....how do we move forwards?
The Lesley Riddoch Podcast
Lesley Riddoch and Fraser Thompson
4.6 • 274 Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
So much for the week off. Fraser and Lesley rush to the microphones for an unexpected, emergency podcast following Peter Murrell's guilty plea in Edinburgh. With Lesley literally broadcasting from a hotel car park in Wick on her way to the mass rally outside Holyrood, we unpack what this catastrophic pivot moment means for the SNP and the wider independence movement. In this episode, we discuss:
- The "Smoke-Filled Room": Why did the party choose to ignore the glaringly obvious warning signs for so long? * The Closed-Shop Legacy: Reflecting on the Sturgeon-Murrell era and how internal critics like Joanna Cherry and Douglas Chapman were sidelined.
- Corporate Festival vs. Grassroots Campaigning: How the party tilt shifted toward "Heathrow Lounges" and away from its own members.
- Taking Back the Mojo: Why the Yes movement needs to become a self-organising, self-authorising force rather than waiting on a nod from ANY party HQ.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Well, hi folks and welcome to this week's unexpected and unplanned Leslie Riddick podcast as a result of Peter Murrell's guilty plea yesterday in court in Edinburgh and the media forroar and perhaps the expected, but in some degrees, understated so far, a response to this. We felt that it was necessary to record a pod. |
| 0:24.1 | Leslie has swung into a car park somewhere in beautiful Caithness, having got up at the absolute |
| 0:31.2 | crack of dawn in Orkney to get a ferry and hightail it to Edinburgh to be part of Operation Mass Hingaboot outside the |
| 0:40.2 | Scottish Parliament this evening at 630 to 730 as a result of the Section 30 vote. And if you're |
| 0:48.9 | listening to this podcast on the train on the way through to Edinburgh to join that or on the bus. |
| 0:54.5 | Well done. |
| 0:55.7 | If you're not on your way, then get your bohoot there. |
| 1:00.1 | Leslie, how's the view from the car park? |
| 1:03.2 | Well, first of all, it's six till seven 30, just in case the timings, you know, people get |
| 1:07.9 | confused there with the timing. |
| 1:09.7 | Yeah, well, I hope this is sounding okay because I'm actually Sukin Broadband from |
| 1:14.1 | Macaise Hotel in Wick at the moment and thank you very much for letting me do it. |
| 1:17.8 | But yes, I mean, you know, God, all my shoes, just try and go on holiday and then everything |
| 1:21.7 | happens. |
| 1:22.7 | So I had to get up early this morning to get the first ferry at 6.30 to get over here. |
| 1:27.2 | And of course, all the Murrill stuff is just tumbling in. Just as I was waiting to connect with you, there was a call from the Jeremy Vine show. I've just, that is just Sky News, all of them happily. You know, I've stuck on a ferry. So, but I just did think, well, okay, let's just get where we are with this. I know for a lot of people, this is, you know, some people will have kind of got some of this priced into their heads and think, yeah, this day was coming. We knew it was coming. Okay, that's bad. And there's the tent. It's sort of slightly explained because all the goodies had to be listed and, you know, the evidence not contaminated |
| 2:01.2 | with, so there's no question of who had, you know, who it belonged to and so on. But it's bigger |
| 2:06.3 | than that. It's much bigger than that. And it really is, as many people had been saying for many |
| 2:12.2 | years, actually, the way the S&P operated for the long period of Nicholas Sturgeon's leadership was a closed shop. |
| 2:21.1 | It was a leadership of essentially two people, herself and Peter Murrell. |
| 2:25.8 | That was never okay. |
| 2:27.4 | It was never okay to have a husband and wife team run the whole shooting match. |
... |
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