Jeane Freeman, who has died aged 72, held two critical roles in the SNP government at Holyrood, leading the Scottish government’s response to the Covid pandemic alongside Nicola Sturgeon and establishing Scotland’s first devolved social security system.
By no means a career politician but an instinctive campaigner from the outset, she entered elected politics a decade ago, and relatively late in life, after a varied career in nursing, criminal justice and the civil service. This followed a political journey from her family’s working-class, trade-unionist roots to the progressive nationalism of the 2014 independence referendum campaign, during which she championed women’s voices and famously took on the broadcaster Andrew Neil in a viral interview about whether the union benefited Scotland’s NHS.
