Coin sets, footrests, rain gauges: all human frailty was apparent in Peter Murrell’s spending spree

Deep in the tragicomic list of stuff Peter Murrell bought with embezzled Scottish National party funds were items that baffled me. What on earth were S’well Unisex’s Roamer stainless steel growlers, at £75 and £55 – robot security dogs?

What was a G Ettinger Bridle Hide 6 Hook key case (£100)? Did Nicola Sturgeon have a secret pony? And wasn’t it hypocritical to support Scottish independence while investing £820 in UK coin sets from the Royal Mint?

Why multiple purchases of lawn edging, a robot lawnmower for £3,070 (including installation), powered scarifiers, weather stations and rain gauges? Or a £402 footrest, a £1,946 fitted library, a £943 oak library ladder and a £2,618 Lalique crystal salt and pepper grinder set? As one wag said on X, the couple lived in a three-bed Persimmon house with a small garden, not f***ing Versailles.

There is deep poignancy here, of course there is, at such pitiless intrusion into human frailty. We’d all hate our spending history to be subject to public mockery. Most of us aren’t blowing stolen money or addicted to luxury brands, but the psychology of spend and reward is both fascinating and alarming. Good, honest people easily end up in debt when it goes out of control.

My nearest experience to free money was being let loose with a £100 voucher in an M&S food hall – and yes, there was a weird blood rush. I picked extravagant food I’d never normally buy, luxury treats for others.

That’s a seed of the madness that made Murrell purchase stupidly expensive things such as the growlers – thermos flasks, basically – and bridle hide, a pathetically posh leather key holder. And therein lies the bathos of the whole luxury goods market: conspicuous consumption based on social aspiration and the irresistible lure of high prices, never on need.

If capitalism is about turning luxuries into necessities, as Andrew Carnegie maybe said, then this is the harvest: in 2022 a white and grey Hermès Diamond Himalaya Birkin made of crocodile skin – apparently the holy grail of handbags – was auctioned for $450,000. Just stuff, but stuff made so deliberately exclusive even billionaires must compete for it.

The Birkin qualifies now as a “Veblen good”, after the American academic Thorstein Veblen, who in 1899 wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class. Perceiving that material excess fed human status and self-worth, he coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption” and helped inspire F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Today’s billionaire class have evolved sufficiently to humble-brag, as exemplified by the $10m-plus wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez in Venice, where guests were invited to donate to local causes instead of bringing gifts and were each given a pair of slippers that may or may not have come from Amazon.

Scan publications such as the FT’s How To Spend It magazine and it’s plain the established rich whisper their wealth. Lower down the scale, not so much. “I’m still screaming,” says the comedian Robby Hoffman, speaking for the ordinary people who can now stake a claim — for lux is light. Beautiful things, illuminating their lives.

Democratisation of luxury means Veblen’s name has been hijacked by market analysts advising companies to hike prices 500%, monetising human weakness with ruthless marketing. Those who queue for a new iPhone, another Veblen good, prove its success.

Murrell was all too human, vulnerable to aspiration, vanity and dreams. In his spending history you can discern a wish for both he and his wife to escape, in that notorious camper van, guided by copies of Take the Slow Road: England and Wales, to Scotland to Ireland, with walking boots, onesie and wine cooler. Instead, pitifully, both their lives are ruined.

Photograph by Alamy