THE horror show that is Westminster politics doesn’t seem to have found the bottom yet as it dives deeper and deeper into chaos and confusion.

Liz Truss’s announcement that she will stand down as Prime Minister brought an end to what has been the shortest - and surely worst – tenure of any Prime Minister yet.

I congratulate Rishi Sunak on becoming the first UK Prime Minister of Asian descent. That, in itself, is a milestone and an achievement that should be celebrated. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that we need a General Election now.

In a very unfunny Tory version of Groundhog Day, some of the same runners and riders tried to persuade their colleagues to pick them this time. But, of course, it wasn’t quite the same. With an even further lurch to the ludicrous, Boris Johnson flew home from his holidays (parliament is NOT in recess, by the way) with some of his acolytes touting him as the great saviour. ‘Boris or Bust’, according to Rees-Mogg!

How short do they think the public memory actually is?

But what do all these shenanigans actually mean for the people I represent here in Clackmannanshire & Dunblane? Well, nothing at all – and a great deal indeed. I know that sounds totally contradictory, but both are true.

Because the choice of Prime Minister has been in the hands of an incredibly shrinking electorate: Boris Johnson became Prime Minister following a General Election, but it was one where, as is usual, the Tories were well beaten in Scotland. Indeed, they haven’t won a majority of the seats here since the 1950s. After Johnson was, rightly, ousted, his replacement was chosen by Tory party members, and now Rishi Sunak has simply emerged from the back room deals and WhatsApp chats amongst Tory MPs.

They don’t care that Sunak, too, was fined for his part in Downing Street parties during lockdown. Or, that there are a lot of question marks over the tax he and his wife pay on their massive incomes, not to mention his holding onto a US green card until October 2021 - more than six years after he became an MP and over 18 months after he became Chancellor of the Exchequer.

So, the democratic deficit grows and grows, and we - repeatedly - have no say over who will implement the policies that affect us all.

And that is where it matters a great deal. Because it is the decisions that these Tory Prime Ministers make that have plunged us into a cost of living crisis, that force people into horrific choices about heating and eating, that have tanked the pound and caused upheaval in the mortgage market.

All of this, of course, on top of the ‘original flavour’ Tory chaos that is Brexit.

Britain is broken and Scotland needs to put this Disunited Kingdom behind us. We need to be back as part of the European Union, the largest trading bloc in the world, and we need to regain democratic control over our own future.

None of the UK parties have that on offer.

Scotland needs to determine our own democratic and economic path. We are now on the fifth UK Prime Minister since the 2016 Independence Referendum. Don’t tell me now is not the time!