The rising cost of the police investigation into the SNP’s finances is becoming disproportionate - Vladimir McTavish

Sir Iain Livingstone, outgoing Chief Constable of Police Scotland, in his last radio interview, has claimed that the force’s investigation into the SNP is “proportionate” and denied it was politically motivated. I cannot be the only one to find both of these claims hard to believe.

Officers from Police Scotland outside the Glasgow home of Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon, where a blue police tent was erected in the front garden.

Police Scotland have admitted that they have now spent several hundred thousand pounds more on Operation Branchform than the alleged £600,000 said to be “missing” from SNP records. In other words, hundreds of thousands pounds in public money has been frittered away sticking up tents in people’s gardens, in the full glare of the media.

The only end result appears to be giving a free platform for the predictable rent-a-quote brigade from Labour and the Tories to issue their customary pompous quotes.

Scottish Tory chair Craig Hoy seems to think this is wonderful value for money, despite representing the Party Of Spending Cuts. Hoy and Labour’s Jackie Baillie seem to have the same word-for-word soundbites on continuous loop, unless the BBC are using library footage of them to save on the budget.

Vladimir McTavish Scottish comedian

If you’re unfamiliar with Jackie Baillie, count yourself fortunate. She’s Scottish Labour’s deputy leader who sounds very much like a Tory every time she opens her mouth. I’m sure there are millions of former Labour voters in Scotland who would give the same two-word answer as I do, when asked why we deserted the party. Those two words are Jackie Baillie. Or indeed three words, as she is now known as Dame Jackie Baillie. That’s dame, as in pantomime. At the end of the day, £600,000 is small change in the finances of a major political party.

Nobody would even notice if six-hundred grand were to disappear from the Conservative Party’s coffers. And if they did, it would take one phone call to some dodgy Russian oligarch to plug the hole. Six-hundred thousand would probably not even be enough to pay for a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list.

As for Labour, that figure would be dwarfed by the annual donations they receive from trade unions. According to 2015 figures, Unite alone donated more than £5 million to the party. You’d need at least ten back gardens to bury that amount of cash.

All of which adds up to the impression that Police Scotland not only be appear to be taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but are grandstanding to the media at the same time.

Senior figures in the SNP seem to be very much on the back foot when asked their opinion. Former press spokesman Murray Foote is the only person to have openly critiqued the cops for making Sturgeon’s home look “like Fred West’s house”.

So far, over £800,000 has been spent trying to find what has happened to six-hundred grand which may or may not have gone missing.

In what universe can that be considered “proportionate” ?