Good news fellow Scots. The First Minister Humza Yousaf has confirmed that in the event of independence, Scottish passports will revert to being burgundy rather than blue which is, I am sure, as great a relief to you as it is to me because, as you know, what colour your passport is really matters.

And there’s more good news. Mr Yousaf also confirmed that people like me would be entitled to citizenship of Scotland after independence. Apparently, I would automatically qualify because I was born here and live here; I’d also have permission to move south of the border to live or work if I wanted to, so that’s another great weight off my shoulders. Thankyou Humza.

There are some things, however, which Mr Yousaf says definitely won’t be happening. There won’t be citizenship tests for example, which is fine by me except it does rule out the intriguing prospect of people who want to be Scottish nationals having to answer questions about the fundamentals of our culture. Questions such as: “who sang Boom Bang A Bang?” Or: “can you finish the popular phrase Fan-Dabi-…?” And: “what kind of vehicle was left at the house of Nicola Sturgeon’s mother-in-law?” That sort of thing.

It does also strike me – as it always does when the SNP talk about their post-independence world – that they’ve missed out great chunks of fact. Mr Yousaf, who was speaking at the launch of the SNP’s latest policy paper, says there would never be a citizen test, fair enough. He also says people would be able to retain their British citizenship, go for Scottish citizenship, or have dual citizenship. But what he doesn’t say is that citizenship wouldn’t just be a question for the Scottish Government and that means the situation is way more complicated than the paper suggests.

To be fair to the SNP, they do acknowledge in the document that a lot of Scots have strong ties to the rest of the UK and would want to retain their current multiple national identities. Jamie Hepburn, minister for independence (which is a thing now) says in the introduction to the paper that independence would not replace any of the identities and we could choose to be Scottish and British. “Independence doesn’t mean any of us must lose anything about who we are,” he says.

As far as that goes, it’s fair enough, although it seems to me that the multiple identities Mr Hepburn talks about are obviously best protected under the current, multi-nation arrangements. We also know what the SNP are trying to do here: they’re trying to make unionists feel comfortable enough to switch sides, but what they’re failing to do is acknowledge the realities of constitutional law and the fact that the UK government would have a role to play in deciding how citizenship would work. The question is: what they would do?

In its new paper, the SNP seems to assume (as they usually do) that the UK Government would simply go along with things and accept the dual-citizenship idea and perhaps they would: there’s nothing in the law to prevent British citizens holding dual nationalities and in general it is allowed.

But assuming current numbers stay the same, some 850,000 Scots would be living in the rest of the UK after independence, which means around a sixth of the citizens of a newly independent Scotland would be under the UK Government and therefore potentially entitled to dual citizenship. How would the UK Government feel about that? Not only would it be highly unusual for any state to have so many of its people holding dual citizenship, the UK Government would rightly ask questions. How will these dual citizens behave? Where would their loyalties lie? What rights should they have? You can see why it would give them pause.

What’s more, my money would be on the UK Government, especially a Tory government, playing it tough to protect its own interests because that’s what states do and we’ve seen it before. When Theresa May was Home Secretary, she said that in the event of independence, Scots would not automatically have dual nationality and that decisions on whether Scots retained their UK citizenship would be affected by Scottish government policy decisions and, although some dismissed it as bluster at the time, why wouldn’t she say that? She also said decisions on UK citizenship were for the UK Government, which is accurate: they are.

The truth is that what happens after a vote for independence would all depend on detailed negotiations between Scotland and the rest of the UK, not merely the laidback assertions of Humza Yousaf at the launch of a new paper. As it happens, I’d like to think Mr Yousaf is right and I would keep my British citizenship, but I also think it’s possible the UK Government might impose restrictions on dual citizenship – indeed, they’ve hinted so in the past, saying for example that they might require a historical or ongoing connection to the rest of the UK. What does that mean? And more importantly, would I qualify?

It seems to me that the real doubts that exist in this area of constitutional debate – whatever the jibber-jabber at the launch of the SNP paper – mean there could in fact be a citizenship test after independence in that Scots might have to apply to be dual citizens and in some cases might fail to qualify for whatever reasons are seen as important. Some Scots won’t care, but it would be a real source of anxiety for me, and lots of others too I’m sure. Mr Hepburn reassures us that independence won’t mean losing anything about who we are. But what if he’s wrong?

In other ways, I also feel like I’m already being subjected to a sort of citizenship test in that we’re having to start to think about what kind of citizen we might want to be if independence happened. Mr Yousaf said at the launch of his paper that he hadn’t given it much thought – which seems extraordinary for a leader of the SNP – but he also said that he would probably ditch British citizenship and stick with Scottish only. Bully for him, I say.

For me, it’s harder. In some ways, my initial instinct (and the immature one) would be to do the opposite of Mr Yousaf and stick with British citizenship only, but my more pragmatic side says I’d keep dual nationality (provided I was allowed to of course). However, what’s really going on here, deeper down, is the idea that multiple national identities are best served by the multiple-nation system we have at the moment. Maybe that means I’ve failed some kind of test of Scottishness, but maybe it’s this approach, which many Scots hold, that explains why the case for independence still hasn’t broken through. The SNP think they’ve found a way round it with their paper on citizenship. I'm afraid to say they haven’t.