SNP-supporting actor Brian Cox has blasted the party’s shamed finance secretary as a “f****** idiot”.
Derek Mackay was forced to resign after it emerged he had sent hundreds of text messages to a 16-year-old boy.
Dundee-born Cox, star of Mindhunter and The Bourne Identity, has supported the party since 2015 when the Labour party, in his view, no longer stood up for social democracy.
But today the 73-year-old put his party affiliations to one side to condemn Mackay’s behaviour – and criticise the SNP for doing too little to avoid the meltdown.
Cox raged: “He’s such a stupid f****** idiot.
“What the f*** was he thinking? He had a career ahead of him that was just, ‘Wow’.”
The actor, currently directing Sinners – The English Professor for the London stage, suggested the only positive was that it had stopped Mackay “taking over from Nicola”.
He added: “He shouldn’t have behaved like that. There’s a tragic element to it as he was a married man who has a 15 year old son.
“You have to be delicate, especially with trying to get independence. But what he has done stupidly has created a scapegoat. He has lost so much. It’s a tragic and ludicrous situation.”
Turning to the SNP itself, Cox claimed: “He should have got counselling to help him and the party should have done more to support him. We’ve got to be circumspect and careful in this political landscape.”
Cox suggested he would still be supporting the union if Scotland was better represented.
He said: “We could have avoided all of this [independence] if we did certain things but they were never attended too. There should have been more done to redefine the country and each nation.
“If we could have sorted this UK I would still be for it. Scotland is doing bloody well for itself. We are different people. We are not the south. We are more euro central. We needed these elements to create a proper society and rights for Scotland.
“They haven’t done anything for sixty years to help us and we need to get away from it as it’s biased. It would have never happened if we had a proper UK that represented our identity. If they did deal with it and represented us. I would still be for unionism. We just have to get on and become free. It’s biased.”
Away from politics, Cox is directing Sinners—The English Professor for the second time.
The play is a tragic love story by Israeli playwright Joshua Sobel following a professor who is denounced for having an affair and is awaiting to be stoned to death for adultery.
The play features Nicole Ansari, Cox’s wife, who plays the professor and Adam Sina the student who is given the choice to save his own life or join his lover in being stoned to death.
On the play Cox said: “It’s not everyone’s cup of coco. It’s a contentious subject as it is to do with the stoning of a woman. The whole thing is about the emergence of female politics.
“I went back to the author and said we need to give Nur [the male lover] a bigger foundation. The play suffered the first time we did it from the fault the play was not complete. He was so obsessed with the woman he underestimated the loss to the lover and how horrible it was for him that his lover will be stoned to death.
“The play has to be relevant and it has to shift the soul.”
Sinners – The English Professor directed by Brian Cox will be at the Playground Theatre in London from February 25-March 15.
