Brian Cox was a much more famous Dundee University rector than I ever was.
But it looks like he’s reached the same conclusion I arrived at long ago regarding the SNP and independence.
I suspect, like me, he’s reached the view some form of increased devolution shy of leaving the UK is the solution for Scotland.
He didn’t need the brain power of an academic intellectual to realise the party, which will launch its election manifesto this week, has failed its finals and has no chance of a successful re-sit.
‘Indy is busted flush’
John Swinney’s leadership has come far too late to rescue the SNP from electoral oblivion in July and the fatal blow to independence which that will deliver.
Regular readers of this column will know I’ve long thought the SNP’s aims of independence were a busted flush.
Now one of Dundee’s most famous sons and a major star of Hollywood is on the same page.
Cox, like my brother and sisters, attended St Michael’s School in Dundee, a secondary also famous for producing another legendary Dundonian, the late great singer Billy Mackenzie.
The ‘Mikeys’ wasn’t the sort of school which turned out pupils who didn’t know how the world turned.
It may not have been a factory like Eton, churning out ham and egg second-rate politicians who reached dizzy heights through their family contacts and not their abilities, but it did produce the sort of folk who understood that hard graft and common sense were vital to prosper in their working lives.
And, crucially, it was the sort of educational establishment which bestowed the ability to recognise life’s chancers and wide boys and girls, which now and for some time has marked out many of those in the SNP.
Cox is now showing that old traditional working class common sense in jalousing that the only party capable of achieving independence has given up the ghost.
‘Scunnered’
On the BBC at the weekend, speaking about the SNP, he told Laura Kuenssberg: “I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen. It could be backing away from the notion of independence.”
He added: “They have backed off.”
Cox doesn’t need his actors’ union equity card to know when folk are putting on a show – and that’s exactly what the SNP have been doing for a long time.
Performances full of empty bluster and bombast instead of solid plans and pathways have become their stock in trade.
They’ve become one dimensional characters like those thespians who’ve played the same part for so long in TV soaps they couldn’t play another role.
I too once favoured independence but the poverty of thought and petty mindedness of much of the SNP has scunnered me.
The constant blaming of every single problem in Scotland on Westminster has marked out a party incapable of accepting its own shortcomings and unable to formulate a practical way forward, which could persuade a majority of Scots that their futures would be in safe hands.
‘Risks on empty promises’
I realised a while back I wasn’t prepared to risk what I’ve grafted for on an empty promise that things would simply be better for me and for future generations, simply on the say so of folk, some of whom appear to be economically illiterate.
Brian Cox says he still believes in independence but still sees value in working with the rest of the UK.
“I don’t believe we shouldn’t be part of these islands,” he said.
That sounds to me that he’s in favour of more devolution without throwing the water out of the UK bath.
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