It sounds like the haul of an unhappy trophy wife, filling her empty days with retail therapy. Three Fortnum & Mason advent calendars, seemingly priced for those to whom money is no object; a pair of incomprehensibly expensive Lalique crystal salt and pepper grinders; several hundreds of pounds’ worth of Le Creuset; and no fewer than six Nintendos.

But these aren’t the contents of some influencer’s shopping bags. Rather it’s part of the charge sheet against Peter Murrell, former Scottish National party (SNP) chief executive and estranged husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, who pleaded guilty this week to slowly embezzling more than £400,000 from the party to which they both devoted their lives and blowing much of it on designer luxuries. What we may never know is why.

What made a man who seemed a model supportive husband – happy to stay in his alpha wife’s shadow, running their domestic life and orchestrating election campaigns – take such crazy risks with their joint political project? Sturgeon can offer no answers, beyond pleading that she was as deceived as everyone else and that the subsequent breakdown of their marriage has been........

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