CATHY Mohan is the name of the woman who burst Theresa May’s bubble earlier this week.

For weeks now, the Tory leader has been running scared from public scrutiny. She’s refused to take part in TV debates with other political leaders, the public have been excluded from her campaign events and, according to some journalists, she’s even refused to answer questions from other members of the media without them being vetted in advance. On Monday, Cathy showed us all why.

In a devastatingly effective but simple way, Cathy shamed the hosts of the Sunday morning political shows, whose interrogation of Theresa May’s policies has been as soft as their on-set sofas. In sharp contrast, Cathy was direct. Cathy was personal. Cathy was right.

Theresa May was all at sea. She had nothing to say about the horrendous personal and social impact of her government’s record to date. She floundered under pressure and crumbled to a puddle of platitudes when presented with the hard, first-person evidence of the effect of her own policies.

This was a case of the Tories versus the real world, and the real world won.

Theresa May is happy to hide behind a soundbite in a secure location, but when presented with someone who has faced the brunt of Tory policies, she had absolutely nothing to say. There was nothing to protect her from the truth.

Because the truth is, successive Tory governments have punished the vulnerable and preyed on the weak. The truth is that their path towards the most extreme Brexit deal possible is already hurting our economy, and will cost thousands of jobs if pushed to a conclusion. But the scariest truth is, they’ve only just started. If they’ve manged to do so much damage with a wafer-thin majority in the House of Commons, imagine the harm they will do if they’re re-elected with a super-majority on the June 8.

While speaking to voters in Almondbank outside Perth on Monday evening, one woman who had never voted for the SNP put it to me in stark terms. She was going to lend me her vote in this General Election because the prospect of a Tory majority absolutely “petrified” her. She was genuinely scared at the prospect of another five years under an unfettered Tory government who continue to lurch to the right. She was worried for her children, for her community and for the vulnerable in our society.

With a 12-seat majority after the 2015 election, the Tories have punished Cathy and thousands like her by cutting the support she had previously relied upon thanks to our safety net of social security. It’s there to make sure that every one of us has financial protection when we need it. I’ve spoken to dozens of my own disabled constituents who, like Cathy, have financially lost out though the change from Disability Living Allowance to Personal Independence Payments. This support was vital to allow them to mitigate their personal circumstances and live as full and normal a life as possible. Instead they’ve been forced to hand back the keys to their mobility cars.

At the same time, Theresa May and her MPs have done absolutely nothing to stop the rise in the use of food banks, abandoned child refugees to their fate and started to use EU nationals – our friends, neighbours and work colleagues – as bargaining chips in the Brexit negotiations.

This callous raft of policies will pale into insignificance if Labour’s disintegration south of the Border means the Tories are returned with a large majority.

In this, it’s now clear that only the SNP can prevent them from a clean sweep of parliamentary seats, and provide both a proper opposition in parliament and a level of protection for Cathy and others like her.

Theresa May has called this election to strengthen her hand.

It’s the poor, the weak, the sick and the vulnerable who will be crushed if she takes a vice-like grip on parliament.

Instead we must use this election as an opportunity to listen to Cathy and those like her about the potential impact of another Tory majority, and use this against them to strengthen Scotland’s hand. We need to put the brakes on a right-wing Tory government, stop the negotiations to deliver an extreme Brexit in their tracks and strengthen the right to have Scotland’s future back in Scotland’s hands.

Politics is about people.

Now that Cathy’s personal intervention has shattered the illusion that this election is a policy-free zone, we need to turn up the pressure on Theresa May and her Scottish cronies as we crystallise the decision that voters in Scotland must make on June 8.