Interview with Humza Yousaf
I’ve been scornful of ‘brocasts’ – chummy podcasts with ex politicians who feign to be at some binary end of a political spectrum when they are actually twins – but this interview is fascinating for what it reveals.
He talks of his call for a ceasefire in Gaza and his experience of having relatives trapped in Palestine, he is questioned about his view of Salmond and Sturgeon and his intention to try and get investment for Just Transition for Scotland and his personal experience of racism.
Let us know what you think in the comments …
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I felt that this podcast confirmed for me what a fine honest and forthright politician Humza is, and how lucky we are to have him fighting for Scotland’s freedom. I just hope many people listen to it.
Not sure what other learned from it, but I didn’t learn anything new. Certainly no new information on the plan for moving forward to an independent country.
And it’s certainly very clear how much he is still attached to Sturgeon, defending her to the hilt, regardless. While that continues and the SNP don’t ask each other some hard questions on the state of the party and the government record then independence support won’t rise any further and may in fact fall away.
wouldn’t we all like to have an hour of his time for a face-to-face talk?
Apart from Shona Robison who influences him most?
I enjoyed that…
If the underlying message from this Brothers Grin and Grimace show is that UK politics is a chumocracy, then what do all the policy statements really amount to? Indicative that they end with a discussion about charisma.
If the main goal of politics (how we arrange to live in groups large enough to contain strangers) is a healthy society, how does an unhealthy form of politics affect (jeopardise) that goal?
Productivity was hopelessly undefined (by customary measures surely the peacock is the most productive bird, followed by the dodo), but perhaps the most telling segment of the show was when they talked about politics ‘behind the scenes’ (which is not the politics of a republic).
Wading through that hour+, I was certain I had not seen any great advertisement for politics, and if you want to attract a younger generation, surely the required content to length ratio would mean boiling this down to under two minutes.
I thought that the most interesting aspects of the exchange were the personal ones – the struggle with depression, the pressures of being First Minister, the ties of solidarity within the Asian community, the experiences of racism, the friendships, the nightmare of Gaza. Humza Yousaf came across as someone with deep emotional awareness and a solid hinterland.
It wasn’t the kind of interview in which political issues are explored in any detail, but I thought the discussion was revealing nonetheless, as the issues that were raised (the border, economic performance) come up time after time in discussions with people who are sceptical of independence. And clearly, more compelling arguments than those advanced by Yousaf are needed.
In particular, ‘independence = Brexit’, which was raised in the podcast, is something I often hear when out campaigning. The indy-sceptics seek guarantees that everything will be OK: but of course, the arrangements will be the result of negotiations between Scotland, the EU, and the rest of the UK, and their outcome cannot be known in advance, so no such guarantees can be given. But it could be made clear that this process will have nothing in common with the Brexit fiasco by committing right now to a referendum on the deal, once the terms have been agreed with the EU and rUK.
@Paddy Farrington, presumably a major distinction between Brexit and Scottish Independence is that the European Union is not an Empire, and (eventually) its codified constitution was amended to provide for voluntary withdrawal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_the_European_Union#:~:text=Article%2050%2C%20which%20allows%20a,Treaty%20for%20the%20European%20Union.
Although Humza Yousaf adopted a more Union-critical position in the second half of the interview, he didn’t deploy an anti-imperial critique, which he certainly would have had ammunition enough for, nor did he draw the obvious conclusion that Brexit only increased British subservience to the USAmerican Empire. And you can hardly call the USA a healthy society, even just on the opioid crisis death toll alone (something which might easily happen in the UK if USAmerican health policies were foisted upon us).
What a nice person.