The Ferret has been good recently. I’ve shared their latest reports but this one smells a bit, like some of their earlier ones, of Scottish Labour residual loyalty and of Unionism.

They offer us this:

before going on to name Robin MacGeachy:

Companies he owns or co-owns handed £910,000 to the Scottish Liberal Democrats and £700,000 to Scottish Labour. This represents nearly half of all of the Lib Dems’ donations, and nearly a quarter of Labour’s.

and Sandy Easdale:

The Easdale brothers, who are among Scotland’s richest men, gave £150,000 to Scottish Labour via one of their firms. The bus tycoons said they want to help the party remove the SNP from power, believe Anas Sarwar has a better handle on business, and reportedly promised to double the donation if the party leader was able to shape policies which they considered to meet Scotland’s needs.

and:

No direct donations were recorded as being made to Reform UK in Scotland, but the central party received £22.2m since the last Holyrood election, and has overtaken the Tories as the most successful UK fundraiser.

More than half (£12m) of its coffers were filled by Thailand-based businessman Christopher Harborne, a crypto investor and former Tory donor. Several of his businesses are reportedly subsidiaries of an international jet fuel broker that works with oil companies, and which was awarded £29m worth of contracts by the US Department of Defense.

and:

The UK Tories banked £107m in the last five years. Frank Hester accounted for nearly a fifth of the party’s donations, handing over £20m either in his own name, or via his software firm The Phoenix Partnership.

Henry Keswick, a Dumfries and Galloway landowner, donated £18,000 to the Scottish Tories. His family firm, Jardine Matheson is incorporated in the tax haven of Bermuda. The Keswicks previously gave £2m to the Tory party, an anti-EU group and the Better Together campaign.

but the pro-Independence parties:

The Scottish Greens received just £139,000 – a mere two per cent of the total reported by Scotland’s parties. Apart from £7,850 given to the party by its Highlands and Islands co-convenor, all recordable donations came from its MSPs’ own pockets, demonstrating a dearth of backing from larger donors.

and finally, the SNP, despite John Swinney pictured predominantly above:

The ruling SNP was considerably less effective at fundraising compared to other major parties, clocking up £1.65m (22 per cent) amidst periods of leadership turmoil, a police probe, and a drop in polling numbers. More than half of the SNP’s donations were in the form of bequests from late supporters.

Source: https://www.theferret.scot/meet-the-donors-funding-scottish-politics/

So, not one named businessman or wealthy donor giving to the SNP or the Greens in the hope of influencing policy. All income from members? With the Greens, the SNP is a truly democratic trustworthy party. In the light of that, the Ferret’s headline and image are disgracefully misleading and likely to influence some unwary voters on the night before the vote.