Former cabinet secretary Alex Neil reveals 'a number' of SNP MSPs voted for Brexit

Former cabinet secretary for social justice Alex Neil has revealed he and "a number" of his SNP MSP colleagues voted for Brexit.

Less than a month before the 23 June referendum, every SNP MSP voted for a Holyrood motion which supported "Scotland and the rest of the UK remaining part of the EU".

But speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Neil - who served under both Nicola Sturgeon and her predecessor Alex Salmond - said he had changed his mind as the referendum approached.

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He said: "In the last ten days of the campaign I was persuaded, and George Osborne just tipped me over with his emergency budget.

"I saw the scaremongering and there was no way I was going to endorse it. I was not going to vote for George Osborne and David Cameron’s scare campaign.

"There’s a number of my colleagues who have spoken to me privately who did the same. They don’t want to broadcast it. They were betwixt and between and they voted Leave."

Neil also warned  that Sturgeon's pro-EU position risked alienating the million Scots who voted for Brexit.

He said: "A proportion may not well vote for independence. Anecdotally a lot of them have hardened their position.

"A lot of them don’t understand why we don’t want to be run by London and would rather be run by Brussels."

The First Minister is passionately pro-EU and has insisted that since 62 per cent of Scots voted for Remain, a second independence referendum may be needed to stop Scotland being "dragged out of the EU against its will".