HUMZA Yousaf has rejected comparisons of the Scottish independence campaign with Brexit.
The First Minister said “how dare you” when he was told there was a “touch of the Farage” about how he addressed concerns about Scotland’s future after a Yes vote.
Speaking on former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell and ex-Cabinet minister Rory Stewart’s Leading podcast, the SNP leader said there would be “light touch customs checks” on goods passing between England and Scotland after independence.
Yousaf said: "Our paper on the EU doesn’t pretend that there’s not going to have to be some kind of light touch customs checks for some goods coming across the Border between England and Scotland.
“The prize, of course, we say is that Scotland would then be part of a single market that’s seven times the size of the UK and, by the way, we’d have a department within the Scottish Government that effectively would do the paper work for you, deal with the light touch customs checks and so on and so forth.”
Stewart (above), a former leading Tory Remainer, said this echoed the language used by Brexiteers during the debates on Britain’s departure from the EU.
He said: “When we hear the phrase ‘light touch customs checks’, all the alarm bells ring because that’s what the Brexiteers always said as well.”
Campbell then interjected to argue that Brexit had made the practical case for independence weaker because people were more aware of the problems posed by new barriers to trade.
READ MORE: Rory Stewart ‘fanboys’ over Humza Yousaf on podcast
To joking protests from Yousaf, he said: “There’s a touch of the Farage about this, saying ‘This is what’s going to happen’ […] You’re basically saying, you’ve given us the end point in terms of your communication without actually… fair enough, you’re admitting there are problems but it seems to me that people now have a sense of what the problems are…”
Yousaf replied: “We’re not going into the European Union completely cold. We have been of course a member of the European Union for many, many decades.
“Now I accept that there’s got to be an application process. Do I think the application process, would Europe look to speed that up, would we be able to speed that up? I would certainly hope so.”
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