IN THE recent local government elections, the political landscape in the Wee County changed.

The Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party gained four seats on the council, to take them to a total of five, while both the SNP and the Labour Party fell back.

Following these results, the Conservatives made it clear that we were open to any option that delivers for the people of Clackmannanshire, but it would seem that both the SNP and Labour are simply interested in politicking.

After failing to reach an agreement outside the council chambers, the Labour/SNP coalition of chaos reared its head again as the Labour group nominated an SNP councillor to be provost, despite her not being at the meeting, and despite the fact that no one seemed to know whether or not she would accept the role.

The meeting was then adjourned. If the last council term was anything to go by, this shirking of responsibility by the red and yellow teams should come as no surprise to anyone.

Against this backdrop, in just over two weeks, Wee County residents head back to the polls to elect their next Member of Parliament.

Across the constituency of Ochil and South Perthshire – which includes all of Clackmannanshire and the southern portion of Perth & Kinross – the Conservatives got to most first-preference votes in the local government elections: Beating the Scottish Nationalists and pushing Labour into a distant third.

Those results make it abundantly clear that this election is a two-horse race between the Conservatives and the SNP.

The SNP forever talk of standing up for Scotland, but their members of Parliament often seem to spend most of their time sniping from the sidelines without making any real difference.

Take our own MP, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, for example. In her two years as our local representative, she has mentioned Clackmannanshire a mere four times.

She has mentioned both Syria and Yemen more times than she has mentioned the Wee County and she has raised the issue of Scottish independence or a second independence referendum thirty times. It is clear that Tasmina's priorities are not your priorities.

Having a Scottish Conservative and Unionist Member of Parliament for Ochil and South Perthshire sitting on the government benches will give Wee County residents far more influence on UK government policy than any SNP MP could ever achieve.

We need to move on from the divisions of 2014's independence referendum and focus on the issues that really matter to people in Scotland.

Scotland's two governments should be working together in the best interest of ordinary Scots, but everything the current Scottish Government does is in pursuit of a single aim: separation.

We need an MP who will stand up for the needs of local people and one who is not fixated on the constitutional question.

By voting for our excellent Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party candidate, Luke Graham, on June 8, Clackmannanshire will get a hard-working representative who will first and foremost take your lead in determining his priorities.