WESTMINSTER’S cost-of-living crisis continues to cast a dark shadow over household budgets, with many families simply unable to afford to get away on holiday this summer at all.

Each week in Parliament, I’m clear to government ministers that the top concerns Glaswegians have right now is rising mortgage rates, soaring food prices and sky-high energy bills.

It feels like our economy is broken, everything is getting more expensive, yet it is ordinary families who are struggling most and paying the price for a cost-of-living crisis made in Westminster, by a government we didn’t vote for.

Due to continued Tory inaction, this is all likely to get worse before it gets better. 

On Wednesday, the Bank of England announced that almost one million homeowners will be forced to fork out at least £500 more a month to cover mortgage payments by the end of 2026. 

All of this is because of Westminster’s inability to get a grip on rising interest rates.

Of the four million homeowners expected to roll on to new mortgage deals over the next three years, the majority will be paying up to £220 more a month to cover the mortgage by the end of this year because of the difficulty of finding deals with comparable rates.

 The blunt reality is that many families don’t have that extra £220 a month. 

Wages are simply not keeping pace with the cost of living, and we all know that the weekly food shop is getting you a lot less bang for your buck due to soaring prices. 

The Bank of England’s latest mortgage bombshell will rightly concern millions of homeowners right across Scotland, many of whom are already struggling to pay their ever-increasing bills.

So far all we’ve had from the British Government are galling phrases like “just hold your nerve”. 

My constituents are right – we don’t need more of Sunak’s soundbites; we need concrete action to stop people from losing their homes.

All the support offered so far does not go anywhere near far enough and will be of little comfort to the millions of people facing soaring mortgages and worrying about that mortgage renewal dropping in the post.

After 13 years of Tory austerity and an unwillingness to accept the disastrous failures of Brexit, it is no surprise that the UK is now on the brink of a recession.

People in Scotland are sick fed-up of the mismanagement of the economy by Westminster, with many forced to foot the bill for the Tories’ disastrous mini budget last September, which crashed the economy. 

It’s only now that we’re really seeing just how much carnage Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s economic experiment cost.

As we hurtle towards next year’s General Election, voters are wondering how we get out of this mess and which party has the solution to fix broken Britain’s economy. 

The sad truth is neither the Tories nor Sir Keir Starmer’s pro-Brexit Labour Party are offering voters a real alternative that can get our economy back on track. 

We cannot have a conversation about the dire state of our economy without at least acknowledging the economic self-harm of Brexit, which has driven up food costs, especially at a time when household incomes were already under strain.

Over the last few months, it’s become clear to me that only the SNP has a vision and a plan for how to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis. The solution doesn’t lie in London.

In all likelihood, we are going to find ourselves in an election campaign next year where Labour and the Tories will have their faux debate about bashing immigrants to distract us from the chaos of Brexit. 

Both of London’s big parties are likely to go into the campaign with near identical tax and spend policies and it’ll be a bizarre, depressing battle of the technocrats. 

Starmer v Sunak – both of whom have the charisma, charm and human touch of a damp tea towel.

It doesn’t have to be this way, though.  Politics is not a binary choice. 

We can do things differently and, most importantly, we can make decisions ourselves. 

The thin gruel we are being served up by the full fat Tories or the diet Tories should not be the total of our economic ambition.

Only a vote for the SNP at next year’s election will move us forward to force action on the cost-of-living crisis and, more importantly, only a vote for the SNP will give us that opportunity to have our say about who governs Scotland.

Surely, we can all agree that Britain is broken beyond repair and it’s time for decisions about our economy to be made by a Scottish Parliament we elected, not by a Tory Prime Minister who flies around in a private helicopter, looking down and laughing at the rest of us.