The unexpected announcement that the General Election will be on July 4 came after rumours swirled that a Tory leadership ballot would be triggered after the threshold of “no confidence” letters from backbench Tory MPs was reached.

Calling an election was the Prime Minister’s response.

Scotland has been poorly served by the outgoing Government and in this constituency, where Labour came a poor third with only 13.9 per cent of the vote last time, only the SNP can beat the Tories.

From Boris “let the bodies pile high” Johnson, to Liz Truss’s mini-budget which wiped £425,000 million from UK pension funds - almost 10 times Scotland’s annual budget - to the white elephant High Speed 2 rail line under Rishi Sunak, now being built only from London to Birmingham and costing UK taxpayers £579 million per mile of track, the Tories have brought only chaos.

Meanwhile, inflation reached 11.1 per cent, the cost of living has soared and – for the first time ever – people will be poorer at the end of this parliament than at the beginning.

Scotland’s NHS is under real threat as we face more austerity from Labour, which has promised to “hold the door open to the private sector in the NHS” and, like the Tories in England, presided over strikes by doctors and nurses in Wales where it’s in office.

Labour pledges to stick to Tory spending plans that have cut Scotland’s budget year on year, while Brexit has wiped billions from Scotland’s economy.

We need SNP MPs' voices more than ever to fight Scotland’s corner and articulate our values.

With limited powers, the SNP can and does make a difference, whether it’s the Scottish Child Payment of £26.70 per week for the parents of 327,000 Scottish children, lifting 100,000 children out of poverty, 1,140 hours a year of free childcare, free university tuition, care for the elderly, prescriptions and all-day off-peak rail fares.

Scotland has had the best performing A&E units in the UK for nine years; the SNP Government has more than doubled NHS funding since 2007, with the highest staffing to patient ratio in the UK.

Forty per cent more affordable homes have been delivered per head of the population than in England and over 70 per cent more than in Wales. Renewable technologies now generate 113 per cent of Scotland’s gross electricity consumption, up from 20.2 per cent when the SNP first entered government at Holyrood.

The number of schools in “good” or “satisfactory” condition has risen from 60 per cent to 93 per cent with record levels of literacy and numeracy in primary schools, while recorded crime has fallen by 40 per cent to its lowest level in half a century.

Imagine what we could do if we weren’t shackled to the broken Westminster system, where austerity is a parcel passed between Tory and Labour governments.

To build a fairer, more equal society we need SNP MPs opposing more austerity and building the cause of independence to create a better, more prosperous Scotland, like Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and many other European nations.

Let’s put Scotland first and vote SNP on July 4.