The General Election campaign is well under way, with just over three weeks left until polling day on June 8.

Local Conservatives out-polled Labour two-to-one in this month’s East Renfrewshire Council elections.

And, in Barrhead, we took a seat from the SNP.

It is the first time we have had Scottish Conservative representation in Barrhead at council level for over 20 years and I am absolutely delighted to have Paul Aitken as a councillor, standing up for your interests.

As for the General Election, it is a contest between the SNP and Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives.

Labour cannot win here any more. At the council elections, Labour polled its lowest share of the vote in East Renfrewshire for over 100 years and this followed my own success beating them into third place in Eastwood.

A party in terminal decline cannot and will not, under Jeremy Corbyn, stand up to the SNP, whatever their candidate says now.

This is a candidate who wants you to vote for Corbyn as Prime Minister when he has previously said he personally has no faith in him!

I was out in Barrhead campaigning on Thursday evening and there was a positive reaction on the doorstep, with Labour switchers now first-time Conservative voters and much anti-SNP feeling.

The SNP talk big and constantly about independence but most folk recognise that this would do nothing to improve the lives of those living and working in Barrhead.

More information has been published recently showing declining standards in literacy. Some Nationalists say this is a shame on all of us when the real shame belongs to a SNP government which has been repeatedly failing our once world-leading education system for the last 10 years.

Fixing this and our health service and growing our economy should be the real focus of government and not the fixation on independence which obsess Nicola Sturgeon.

You may not have voted Scottish Conservative in the past but I hope you will consider voting for Paul Masterton on June 8.

He has the determination and the ability to stand up to the SNP at Westminster, just as Ruth Davidson and I are doing at Holyrood.

People have had enough of this endless constitutional division. We need the strong leadership of Theresa May to secure the best deal for Britain as we leave the European Union and we need politicians who will concentrate on Scotland’s day job.