The owner of Scotland’s biggest independent bus operator has compared First Minister John Swinney to dictators Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe over plans to bring the country's bus network under public control.
The row comes as Swinney announced that the £2 bus fare cap will be extended to Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire from April next year, with plans for a nationwide rollout by 2031.
Sandy Easdale, who owns McGill’s Group with his brother James, said he would fight the SNP's plans “in every court in the land” after Swinney pledged to bring bus services under public control by the end of the next Holyrood parliament.
McGill’s operates the Aberdeen Adventurer tourist bus service in the North-east.
Mr Easdale said: “What has come over mild-mannered John Swinney? He appears to have transformed into the next Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe, both men, incidentally, who bankrupted their countries through catastrophic financial policies.”
McGill’s chairman Ralph Roberts warned that forcing privately developed bus networks into public franchising arrangements amounted to “business confiscation”.
However, Deputy First Minister Jenny Gilruth defended the proposals, arguing that greater public control would help protect communities from the withdrawal of vital bus routes.
The plans would reverse four decades of bus deregulation, following a similar franchising model introduced in Greater Manchester by Andy Burnham.