The SNP are working for Scotland but there is still so much for us to do

The SNP have achieved a great deal since they took power in 2007. Free personal care, free prescriptions, free education, proper infrastructural investment like the Queensferry Crossing or the A9 dualling has started the long-overdue transformation of Scotland. The SNP are working for Scotland. But there is much still to do.

I was a shepherd and then a farmer. My contribution has largely been focussed around agriculture and the food and drink industries. Two hugely important sectors, which often have unseen downstream benefits, but can be areas of real concern when not managed or protected properly. That’s not just true in our constituency but right across the country.

For example, the work I did with public procurement and trying to get better quality local food for school lunches was about being inclusive and enterprising. If we could create a bigger market share for our top-quality food producers and farmers that was a positive outcome, but the more important issue was that our children were given access to the best quality food in the world. If we are going to close the attainment gap, and poverty is part of the problem, access to top-quality food is part of the solution.

It might seem obvious – we have such a fabulous farming and quality food industry, that we would want our most precious assets, our children, to be the net beneficiaries of that quality. But there was a job to be undertaken and I was perfectly placed to represent it because of my unique experience and career to date. Research has proven that concentration levels, energy levels and behaviour all respond positively to a good-quality diet and giving access to that resource will undoubtedly help our goal of reducing or, even better, eliminating the attainment gap. These are the type of issues that I will be looking to drive forward as an elected representative.

I don’t think there will be any SNP party member, councillor, MSP, MP, minister or Cabinet Secretary who is surprised by the sickening behaviour of the Westminster Tories. Their very clear end goal of a No-Deal Brexit has been long in the planning by those who now lead their party and Government. Their utter incompetence of handling a global pandemic, and their clear designs on destroying the gains the people of Scotland have made through devolution, have appalled not only us but many of their own traditional voters.

Despite my upbringing in a working-class housing estate in Perth, I was determined from an early age to work in the countryside with animals of some kind. As it turned out, I stumbled into being a shepherd, before eventually taking on a rented farm of my own for 10 years. In that time I founded Scotland’s Farmers Market movement, I built up a successful catering business using our own farm to fork marketing, I have worked with both local national government as an adviser on rural issues, and helped to redefine objective aims in our public procurement system, with a move from cheapest price to best value, and improved nutritional standards.

It’s for these reasons that I have built up a certain amount of currency in talking to traditional voters, be they rural or urban, who would not usually support us. Even some the most traditional Tory-voting farmers have indicated to me that my candidacy, and Johnson’s Government, are a combination that will bring them to our party next year. If we want to be an inclusive and diversity-driven party, that diversity must include our rural population, and particularly farmers, who right now feel utterly unrepresented. I can be part of the solution to fix that problem.

There is no doubt that the campaign for the nomination in Perthshire South and Kinross-shire is going to be one of the hottest contests of this selection process. As I write there are four great candidates to choose from. I am in no doubt, however, that as a well-known local candidate who has worked voluntarily with and for those in my community – be that in a council housing estate or the farming industry, or the patrons of Gleneagles Hotel – I can connect to the broadest range of voters when it comes to retaining this seat in May.

If selected, I will make it my mission to vigorously pursue our local agendas of maximising the opportunities for our residents, while simultaneously driving our ultimate goal to make this our last ever devolved parliament and deliver an independent country.

My priority will be to ensure an independent Scotland moves from a dream to a reality. Only independence can truly release the full potential of Scots and Scotland. Only independence can turn our hope into the best work we will ever have – building our nation together.