Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar hits the campaign trail

Mr Sarwar made the stop along with former Better Together chief Blair McDougall, who is the party’s candidate in East Renfrewshire.

Parties and candidates have just 37 days to make their case to voters before they head to the polls.

The vote will take place on July 4 after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a snap election in a surprise announcement last week.

During the visit to Aldomak’s premises in Burnfield Avenue, Mr Sarwar told the Barrhead News: “East Renfrewshire is one of those seats where you will recall back in 1997 it was a big surprise result when Labour won, but people recognised that they wanted change, they wanted a new kind of government and they saw that in the Labour Party.

“I think in this election there is a very similar situation where people want change, they want a different type of government and ultimately only Labour can deliver that.

“One of the challenges we are going to have in East Renfrewshire is demonstrating to people that this seat is a straight fight between the Labour Party and the SNP and if you want to beat the SNP, if you want to deliver a UK Labour government then in this seat you have to vote Labour.”

He also spoke about his party’s platform in this election and what he believes this will mean in a constituency with high levels of affluence, but also areas of severe deprivation and high foodbank usage.

“Our platform in this election campaign is to deliver economic stability and growth across the country which means lowering the cost of mortgages and making sure businesses can be successful," he added. 

"It’s also backed up by a new deal for working people and the most transformative change in workers’ rights in a generation that will deliver a genuine living wage.

“(In East Renfrewshire this) means lifting people out of poverty, it means increasing people’s incomes and it will mean more investment in our local public services and it means businesses have an environment they can thrive in much more successfully.”

Mr McDougall, who led the No campaign during the 2014 referendum and was previously the party's candidate in the area in the 2017 General Election, is seeking to oust the SNP's Kirsten Oswald from the East Renfrewshire seat.

Ms Oswald was voted into parliament in 2019 with 44.9% of the vote, overcoming an 8.8% deficit over her Conservative rival Paul Masterton who took the seat from her in 2017. 

During the stop at the East Renfrewshire business, Mr McDougall called on voters to “give change a chance,” this time round.

“This is a constituency that has voted for elected MPs from all three of the main parties in Scotland, so it’s a constituency where you have to fight for every vote,” he said.

“What we are finding this time is that a mixture of people who may have voted Conservative in the past and people who voted SNP in the past are really disappointed in what they think are two really incompetent governments.

“Here as well there is a caricature of East Ren of being a constituency where people do very well but we’re finding a lot of people who are really struggling.

“Even though there are two people in work and one of them might have a really good job, they are not able to afford the holiday or the winter coat for the kids, things that they might have expected that hard work would have provided them in the past.

“I think the challenge for us is that when people do feel it’s been so long since they had the support from government that they had in the past, can we make them believe that change is possible again.”