IT’S barely two weeks until Scotland and the rest of the UK head to the polls – and there is no doubt that the election is really heating up.

The question of who should get to decide Scotland’s future has become a key theme in this campaign.

If you caught any of last week’s head-to-head TV debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, you probably came to the same conclusion as many other people – neither of these men should be in charge of Scotland’s future.

Boris Johnson’s determination to deliver Brexit no matter what the cost – and we know that any form of Brexit will make us poorer – flies in the face of what people in Scotland voted for when they overwhelmingly backed the option of remaining in the EU back in 2016.

Under Jeremy Corbyn’s weak leadership, Labour have got into a position where they cannot guarantee that Scotland will not be dragged out of the EU against its will. And, incredibly, Jeremy Corbyn is now saying he is “neutral” on the question of Brexit. That is not leadership – and it is most definitely not what Scotland needs.

Of course, Labour are desperate to talk about anything other than Brexit – and although they’ve announced a number of eye-catching policies during this campaign, many of them will feel very familiar to people north of the border.

That’s because policies like free prescriptions, free university tuition, votes at 16, free personal care, opposition to fracking and a publicly owned water company – now being promised by U.K. Labour – are already being delivered in Scotland by the SNP.

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They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – but the striking fact is that while Labour talks, the SNP delivers.

There are many areas which set the SNP and Labour miles apart. For instance, despite Jeremy Corbyn claiming to be personally opposed to Trident renewal, Labour are signed up to replacing the UK’s weapons of mass destruction programme, with the cost running into hundreds of billions of pounds. That is the wrong priority.

But policy positions aside, the hard fact of the matter is that Labour can’t win in Scotland. The SNP is the main challenger in all of the 13 seats held by the Tories north of the border – meaning that the only way for Scotland to help deprive Boris Johnson of the parliamentary majority he so desperately craves is to vote SNP

But let’s go back to the issue of who gets to decide Scotland’s future.

The SNP has a very simple position on this – it should be up to the people of Scotland to choose their own future. Whether or not you support independence for Scotland, surely we can all agree that it should be up to the people living here – not a Westminster government we didn’t vote for.

The Prime Minister said that he would never agree to holding another referendum even if the SNP wins in Scotland with a clear commitment to hold one. He was later completely undermined by his Scottish Secretary, who conceded that an SNP in the next election – not this one – would be a mandate to hold an independence referendum.

Take a moment to think about that. The Tory pitch to voters in Scotland is that it doesn’t matter how you vote in this election – we’re going to ignore you.

Labour’s position is little better – not least because Jeremy Corbyn managed to articulate three different positions in barely 24 hours, seemingly unclear as to whether he’d want to block it forever, or just a few years.

But all of the confusion within both Labour and the Tory parties is only happening because privately they know that they cannot simply ignore a clear statement from the people of Scotland – expressed repeatedly and democratically in elections – that they wish to be given a say over their own future.

And that’s why it’s absolutely vital to vote SNP in this election. Scotland’s future must be in Scotland’s hands.

If we carry on as we are, continued Westminster control – headed up by the Tories – means threats to Scotland’s economy, public services and living standards.

Brexit is already harming our economy – and even if the UK does leave the EU, what follows are years of arguments about trade deals and future relationships. Leaving was supposed to be the easy part. And we know that the NHS is under threat from a trade deal with Trump.

A vote for the SNP is a vote to oust Boris Johnson from Downing Street. It’s a vote to escape Brexit and the many threats it poses to our public services, the people who live here and our future prosperity.

It’s a vote to protect Scotland from the consequences of a Tory Trump trade deal and to end the democratic deficit of endless Tory governments with no mandate in Scotland.

And most fundamentally of all, it is a vote to secure the right to choose our own future – so that we can build a better, fairer, more prosperous future, for this and generations to come.