ANALYSIS

IT is rare for any politician to win much credit from the curmudgeonly Holyrood press pack but Alex Neil is certainly making us all sit up and take notice.

The fierce discipline that has been the hallmark of the SNP’s decade in power has left little room for the party’s top performers to dissent from the Bute House view.

For years the best hope of a minister deviating from the script was a wayward comment at a conference fringe event or a line buried in a dusty trade publication.

Freed from the shackles of being “on message”, it is refreshing to hear Neil speak his mind.

First on Brexit – Neil is unofficial spokesman for the estimated 400,000 Yes voters who have balked at Nicola Sturgeon’s EU love-bombing – and now on the whitewash concerns over the mesh inquiry he ordered.

Neil, popular across all the benches, is no rent-a-quote as he picks his battles and remains loyal to the cause of independence.

But by casting a pebble in the outwardly calm waters of the SNP-run Scottish government he is doing us all a favour.

Everyone needs a critical friend in their life and in politics it these people who can hold greater sway than the opposition.

So for the thousands of women in agony every day as a result of the mesh scandal, lets hope the Scottish government listens to its former respected health secretary.