The First Minister slapped down comments made by his predecessor but one – saying he was focused on making independence an “overwhelmingly popular concept in Scotland”.
Appearing on the BBC’s Sunday Show, Swinney was asked by host Martin Geissler whether he agreed with Sturgeon’s comments in the Financial Times.
Swinney said: “No, I don’t think it is. I think what, if we talk in this interview about the economic circumstances that we face, I think it’s pretty clear that economic management in the UK and economic opportunity is deeply flawed and deeply weakened because of the folly of Brexit.
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“Now the way to sort Brexit is for Scotland to become an independent country and rejoin the European Union, that will open up economic opportunities for our country.
“It will, crucially, allow us to have our approach to migration which will actually be in our economic interests other than the folly that’s been pursued by the UK Government.”
Swinney said there should be a Northern Ireland-style deal for Scotland.
According to the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, which maintains the fragile peace in Ireland, there can be a unification poll if the UK Government identifies sustained majority support for the reunification of Ireland.
The First Minister said: “We’ve now got a situation in Northern Ireland, for example, there is an accepted means by which the constitutional status of Northern Ireland can be changed, i.e. there can be a border poll.
“But there is not apparently the possibility of such an opportunity for a process and a route to exist for Scotland and that’s not good enough and that’s not appropriate for a democracy.”
Scotland’s journey to independence would be similar to that of the journey to devolution, Swinney predicted, saying that the referendum held to create the Scottish Parliament was a confirmation of what he said was the obvious will of Scots.
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He said: “The priority for me is to demonstrate that beyond any doubt that Scotland wants to become an independent country and that’s how Scotland will become an independent country because that’s what happened with devolution.
“Although we had a referendum in 1997 about devolution it was plain to anyone’s view that Scotland had decided we wanted a parliament, we wanted a parliament that was powerful within the UK and that was absolutely demonstrable, nobody could stand in the face of that and I need to get the independence arguments into exactly the same shape and independence support into the same shape and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”