After more than 15 years of the most centralised, disciplined and smoothly co-ordinated political machine in the UK, the Scottish National Party has in the space of a few short weeks descended into factionalism.
It is the sort of in-fighting that commentators predicted would happen after independence, not before the prize was won.
It has been more than ten weeks since Nicola Sturgeon’s sudden resignation as party leader and first minister, a crisis that she described this week as her “worst nightmare”.
In March her husband, Peter Murrell, resigned as chief executive of the SNP. In early April he was arrested and then released without charge. Colin Beattie, the party treasurer, suffered a similar fate 13 days later.
Since then there has been talk
