LEADING EU politician Guy Verhofstadt has hit out at the claims of Brexiteers – pointing to evidence that they "lied" on trade.

Belgian MEP Verhofstadt was the EU's chief Brexit co-ordinator, and has previously told a Westminster committee that it's a "simple fact" Scotland would have no major obstacles in joining the EU as an independent nation.

He took to Twitter to post a graph that compared trade figures for the UK and European Union nations.

Verhofstadt said: "The Brexiteers lied. The reality check: Trading is much harder outside of the [European Union's] single market!"

The graph posted by the MEP shows the "trade flows as per cent of GDP" for the UK in blue and "EU main countries" in pink.

These main countries are Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

As the impact of Brexit hit, the UK's blue bars can be seen falling, hitting a decade low-point towards 2021.

The hit to UK trade comes after Scotland was pulled out of the EU against the wishes of its voters.

In 2018, Tory MP Douglas Ross tried to trip then chief Brexit negotiator Verhofstadt up on Scottish independence.

The former Belgian prime minister was appearing in front of Westminster’s Home Affairs Committee.

Ross asked the MEP if still believed comments he had made in September 2016 when he said “if Scotland decides to leave the UK to be an independent state and they decide to be part of the EU I think there is no big obstacle to do that”.

“That’s a fact. That’s a simple fact,” Verhofstadt told the Committee.

“You don’t think that’s an obstacle for them to simply rejoin?” Ross questioned.

Shutting Ross down, Verhofstadt replied: “I think the problem isn’t that. The problem is how we can find a close relationship between the UK and the EU, and during that discussion we will not do anything that is an interference in the constitutional order of the UK. We are going to avoid that. That’s not our task.”