Downstream: Former Scottish Leader: How My Family Escaped Gaza & Why I Can’t Forgive Starmer w/ Humza Yousaf

Aaron Bastani (0:08)

Imagine you're the leader of a country with millions of people. You're also quite young, and you're the first Muslim to have that job. In fact, you're the first Muslim leader of any nation, anywhere in Western Europe. A lot of responsibility. Now, you've been in that job several months, and something happens thousands of miles away in Israel, to be precise, which will remake the regional and, to a lesser extent, the global order.

That's a huge challenge for anyone. But on top of that, now imagine this. While you have that political responsibility, your parents-in-law are stuck in Gaza.

So while there are expectations for you to respond to the events of October 7th, your wife's parents are being bombed by the IDF. That's what happened to my guest today, Humza Yousaf. He was the First Minister of Scotland from March 2023 to May 2024 He was in the job for about 13 months. But it was only after October 7th, 2023, that things got really personal. In a way actually, that I think very few will understand, unless they read his account of those events, Under Fire, My Family's Escape from Gaza and the Cost of Leadership. In this book, Humza talks about his wife's grandmother being 18 when the Nakba happened, when about three-quarters of a million people were expelled from their land. By the Israelis. She had to leave her country a second time after October 2023

It's a very valuable perspective to a conversation that we've had many times, and I think Humza illuminates it in really important ways. On top of that, of course, I want to talk to him about leading a country, especially as a young person. What was it like? What did he learn? When Elon Musk was trying to cancel him to his 235 million ex-followers, how did he really feel inside? So much more to discuss as well. Humza Yousaf, welcome to DownStream.

Humza Yousaf (2:04)

Pleasure.

Aaron Bastani (2:05)

You look very fetching.

Humza Yousaf (2:07)

Nobody has ever said that to me before, so I shall take the compliment. We should stop the interview right here.

Thank you. This is a kafir that my wife gifted me, actually, from a brand called SEP, where they work with Palestinian women in Jordanian refugee camps. They give them the kafirs, they stitch on it to trees, which is an ancient Palestinian design, and then the money gets reinvested back into those camps. And it's a wonderful social enterprise, and if you can support SEP, you absolutely should.

Aaron Bastani (2:34)

And there's a website, isn't there? I've written it down. We can put it in the description.

It's gorgeous. The colourway is gorgeous. It must be a strength. We've never met before. And the first thing I said is, wow, Humza, your kafir is gorgeous.

Humza Yousaf (2:46)

Yeah, we haven't met, which is incredible, given I feel like I've done every interview in every station in the country over the years, so it's a pleasure to be with you.

Aaron Bastani (2:53)

You know, the strange thing is, I mean, I said this before we started recording. We were last in Scotland as Novara, me included, really, with COP in Glasgow, which is 2021

Humza Yousaf (3:05)

It's too long.

Aaron Bastani (3:06)

I know it's too long, but the crazy thing is that English politics, and who would have thought this in the 2010s or the 90s or the 2000s, but English politics has been incredible. I mean, it's just been such an incredibly wild, volatile, chaotic moment, really, from 2023 all the way through to, well, now things are seeming to calm me down, although Nigel Farage might be the next Prime Minister. But we need to rectify that. We need to come back to Scotland.

Humza Yousaf (3:29)

You must, you must. And I think you'd find a very receptive crowd, actually, to what you're doing. But also, the Scottish politics is, unfortunately, in my case, I believe, inherently tied to what happens in the United Kingdom. So that volatility affects us, and often we don't have a say over it. Brexit being the most obvious example, I think, the most obvious recent example of that, where we can vote one way and yet still have to deal with the horrendous implications of the big neighbor down south voting the other way.

Aaron Bastani (3:54)

Nigel Farage could be your Prime Minister.

Humza Yousaf (3:56)

Oh, don't make me vomit in my mouth, but it is a possibility. I mean, a possibility. There's a bit of a burn on bounce, and that's having a dampening effect. And of course, the fact that Nigel Farage keeps taking money off nefarious characters and not declaring it. All of that is dampening that possibility, but I definitely wouldn't write off Nigel Farage getting into number 10