Did the "prime minister" of Scotland deliver a bigoted speech in which he complained that his country had too many white residents? No, that's not true: Humza Yousaf, who has Pakistani roots, never uttered such words during a parliamentary speech, instead expressing support for anti-racism activists in the United States. Moreover, the speech took place in 2020, nearly three years before Yousaf became Scotland's first minister, not its prime minister.
The claim appeared in a Hungarian-language video (archived here) on TikTok on November 4, 2023, under the title (translated from Hungarian to English by Lead Stories staff) "Are there too many whites in Europe?" The presenter, Dávid Filep, goes by the pseudonym A kopasz oszt (The bald guy shares) at Megafon Center, which produces social media content in support of Hungary's governing Fidesz party. Filep said (as translated):
It blows my mind! The Pakistani Scottish prime minister is complaining that there are too many white people in Scotland!
The video then wipes to a soundbite of Yousaf speaking in Scotland's parliament, saying:
At 99 percent of the meetings I go to, I'm the only nonwhite person in the room. But why are we so surprised, when the most senior positions in Scotland are filled almost exclusively by those who are white?
Filep comments (as translated):
I know the Western countries' colonial history is painful for these people, but I'm begging you! Leaf through a book on European history! What do they want? For us to put on our coats and hand over Europe and then move to Africa?
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Jan 24 12:35:24 2024 UTC)
Yousaf never complained about the Scottish population's relative lack of melanin in his speech in Scotland's Parliament on June 10, 2020. He was speaking in support of a motion that expressed solidarity with U.S. anti-racism activists following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. At the 1:58:12 mark of the YouTube video of the session (archived here), Yousaf opined that minorities were underrepresented in Scottish government positions, saying:
Racism is literally killing minorities, as we have all seen and all referenced. But as everybody has mentioned, racism doesn't just exist in the United States. The events in the United States forced us to hold a mirror up to ourselves and to confront the racism that exists here. The unconscious, the subtle, the overt, the institutional, the structural. On all these fronts, Scotland is not immune ... At 99 percent of the meetings I go to, I'm the only nonwhite person in the room. But why are we so surprised, when the most senior positions in Scotland are filled almost exclusively by those who are white? Take my portfolio alone. The lord president? White. The lord justice clerk? White. Every high court judge? White. The lord advocate? White. The solicitor general? White. The chief constable? White. Every deputy chief constable? White. Every assistant chief constable? White.
When Yousaf mentions his "portfolio," he is talking about his role as Scotland's cabinet secretary for justice, a position he held from 2018 to 2021, according to the Scottish Parliament's website (archived here). He did not become Scotland's first minister until March 2023, according to his bio page on the Scottish government's website (archived here).
Roughly 4.5 percent of Scotland's population describe themselves as members of an ethnic minority, compared with 95.4 percent who declare themselves white, according to a 2022 report on the British government's website (archived here).
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is an anti-immigrant firebrand who in 2015 warned that European leaders had a "secret agreement" that would allow Islamic migrants to "overrun" Europe, according to a statement on his official website (archived here).
