PETER Murrell called the shots behind the official Yes Scotland campaign and its cash, an insider has claimed.
Ian Dommett, marketing director at Yes Scotland until January 2024, claimed that the jailed former SNP chief executive – who pleaded guilty to £400,000 of embezzlement from the party – controlled high-value donations intended for Yes Scotland.
The Sunday Mail reports that Dommett alleged he couldn’t do anything during his time at the independence campaign that “wasn’t under Murrell’s control”.
Dommett also disputed the SNP’s position that the two organisations were separate, and that the SNP “tightly controlled” Yes Scotland from the start. He said this included Murrell and high-value donations such as those from lottery winners Colin and Christine Weir.
He said the SNP “effectively ran” the cross-party Yes campaign from 2014, and that despite Yes Scotland having £2.4 million in income in 2013 – much of which was from donations – this did not “trickle down” and it was a “real struggle to fund the campaign”.
Dommett claimed Murrell flogged a truck-load of Yes-branded items, with the proceeds going to the SNP.
The former Yes Scotland marketing director no longer works in Scottish politics, living and working in England, having previously worked closely with the SNP under Alex Salmond from 2004. He joined the Yes campaign in 2012.
It comes after Yes Scotland denied allegations that £1.5m is unaccounted for in the company behind the campaign. David Henry, a former SNP branch secretary, reported his concerns over the official accounts of the company to the police, who are now making inquiries.
After the reports emerged, SNP MSP Alyn Smith insisted Yes Scotland was an “entirely separate organisation” to the SNP.
Asked if this was true, Dommet told the newspaper: “No.”
“Nothing happened in Yes Scotland without either the direct instruction or agreement of the SNP,” he said.
“It was unbelievably tightly controlled, the hand was around the neck of Yes Scotland from the beginning.”
Angus MacNeil, a former SNP MP from 2005 to 2024, who later defected to Alba, agreed with Dommett’s assessment.
“The SNP had huge influence, definitely bordering on control, over Yes Scotland. On the day-to-day, Peter Murrell would have been very involved,” MacNeil said.
"It was generally accepted that they didn't get their own way 100 per cent of the time but they got it most of the time. There's no way you would have Yes Scotland off doing its own thing.
"Let's rewind to 2013. If Yes Scotland had been going around saying, 'The SNP have nothing to do with us', who would have believed that?
“Of course they were hand in glove. The SNP were the biggest force in Scottish independence politics."
Dommett said that between 2004 and 2012, Murrell was his “best client”, but said that after he started working in Yes Scotland he was “not willing for us to do anything that wasn’t under his control”.
“I believed we should share research results with the Greens, with the Socialists but he didn’t want to... We fell out badly over that,” he said.
“I knew he was behind me getting dumped from Yes Scotland.
“I was the fourth of five directors to go, so I didn’t take it personally.
“By 2014, it was clear the SNP did not want this campaign to be run by anyone not in the SNP.”
Dommett also claimed that when Yes Scotland turned up to the SNP conference in 2012, they had a “couple of tables full of t-shirts”.
“Outside was an articulated lorry full of Yes-branded stuff,” he added.
“That money was going to the SNP. You can imagine how frustrating that is when you're trying to get money into the campaign - because we were setting up hundreds of groups around the country, travelling thousands of miles, getting people involved in the campaign.
“Then an articulated truck would arrive at the number one event in the calendar and you’d have queues and queues of people giving the money to SNP for Yes merchandise. And it happened all the time.”
He claimed there was a “blurring of responsibilities and accounts” between Yes Scotland and the SNP.
A spokesperson for Yes Scotland told the Sunday Mail: “All of the income received by Yes Scotland is fully accounted for and it is grossly defamatory to say otherwise.
“There now appears to be a desperate attempt to link Mr Murrell’s criminal conduct in the SNP to that of Yes Scotland. To make it perfectly clear, Mr Murrell never at any time had access to Yes Scotland’s accounts.”
They said Dommett’s removal from Yes Scotland was “nothing to do” with Murrell, adding: “Mr Dommett was never involved in the financial side of the organisation. No donations to Yes Scotland were held separately, nor were the donations or accounts ever controlled by the SNP.
“For sake of transparency, it is important to note that the Weirs donated directly £3.5m to Yes, starting in August 2012, and certainly not via the SNP.”
A spokesperson for the SNP added: “Yes Scotland Ltd is and was an entirely separate entity to the SNP. Throughout the referendum campaign Yes Scotland was run by an independent board of directors.
“As everyone knows, the SNP was a major partner in Yes Scotland and campaigned with Yes Scotland during the referendum.”
