Brexit ‘same thing’ as Highland Clearances claims SNP minister

Brexit has been compared by a Scottish Government minister to the Highland Clearances, with a “rich, privileged, entitled” elite pushing Scots to the cliff edge.

Christina Mckelvie, the minister for older people and equalities, told SNP activists the comparison struck her after a recent visit to a “clearance village”.

The Highland Clearances saw generations of Scots shifted from villages and crofts across the Highlands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by landlords who wanted to use the land for sheep grazing.

Mrs Mckelvie said leading Tory Brexiteers like Jacob Rees-mogg were effectively doing a similar thing by taking Scotland out of the EU as she addressed a fringe event at the SNP Autumn conference.

“A few weeks ago I had the real privilege of being up at the Helmsdale Games and on my adventures up there I passed a place called Badbea.

“And I stopped and I thought I’ve heard of this place so I went in and it was a clearance village. I thought it was a place where people were cleared from – it turned out it was a village people were cleared to.

“And it was on the cliff edge. And the wee legend said ‘On the cliff edge – on the edge of Europe’. And it made me think of where we are now – on that cliff edge. Rich, privileged, entitled people shifting people to the cliff edge 300 years ago, 200 years ago – now.

“Still doing the same thing 0 Christina Mckelvie visited Badbea, a ‘clearance village’

– rich privileged Rees-mogg telling us what we can and can’t do. Pushing to the cliff edge and that analogy was very, very powerful.”

Ms Mckelvie was speaking at an event entitled the Final Countdown organised by the Law Society of Scotland.

Jamie Kerr, a lawyer who specialises in migration and immigration told the event that Scotland is less prepared for Brexit than the rest of the UK, because of a “complacency” created by SNP ministers’ high profile stance on Europe.

I think there is a complacency in Scotland and part of it I think is because the Scottish Government have been so active, we watch the ministers, the First Minister being very active and speaking to industry, speaking to businesses affected,” the lawyer said.

“And in a way it makes us think ‘actually it will all be fine, the Scottish Government will sort it all out’. I don’t think that’s going to be the case and I sometimes wonder if we all realise…how steep a slope we are actually about to face because I think Brexit as a process is going to cause us damage, socially, culturally, and economically as well.”