Thursday’s election is vital in determining the future of Scotland. I know you always hear this kind of rhetoric from politicians at election time, but this vote is too important to miss.

For those of you who have not already voted by post or in person by the time you’re reading this, then I am asking you to please make time to go along to your local polling station.

Scotland needs you to turn up. Your vote can help stop an SNP majority and all the damage and upheaval that would cause.

When you enter that polling booth, you will be presented with two ballot papers. The first, a purple ballot paper, is to elect your constituency MSP.

The second, peach-coloured one is for the party of your choice, which elects MSPs on the regional list.

Voters are increasingly savvy about the specific dynamics at play in their constituency and that might influence how they cast their purple ballot – especially when defeating the SNP is their priority.

For instance, pro-UK voters know that in a number of constituencies – including the three seats across the South of Scotland, next to the Border, and throughout much of the North East, as well as Eastwood, Moray, Ayr and Perthshire – only the Scottish Conservatives can beat the Nationalists.

But regardless of where you live in Scotland, the peach ballot paper is your secret weapon to stop an SNP majority.

By voting Scottish Conservative on it, you’re helping elect the regional list MSPs who will stop Swinney in his tracks.

Peach votes cast for the Scottish Conservatives denied Nicola Sturgeon an outright victory in 2016, when I was leading the party, and in 2021, when Douglas Ross stopped the SNP.

And if pro-UK voters stick to that strategy today, together we can do it again. Using the peach ballot to vote for the Scottish Conservatives is the tried and tested method of denying the SNP a majority.

Since becoming Scotland’s biggest opposition party, we have repeatedly held the SNP to account for their failures.

Often we have been a lone voice in Holyrood standing up to their reckless policies and failure to focus on people’s real priorities. Scots do not need to look far for an alternative vision to the SNP’s plans for Scotland.

The Scottish Conservatives, led by Russell Findlay, published an election manifesto full of positive and ambitious ideas to get Scotland working again. To help business, to improve education and to help young people get onto the housing ladder.

Russell and his team have been talking about the issues that matter to you.

The cost-of-living crisis. Growing our economy and creating new job opportunities. Ending that 8am rush for a GP appointment. Restoring standards in our schools. Putting an end to soft-touch justice from the SNP. And upgrading our roads.

Above all else, this election should have been about the cost-of-living crisis.

People are worried about rising energy bills, the price of the weekly food shop and council tax bills which have gone through the roof again.

But to nobody’s surprise John Swinney and the SNP have made this six-week campaign all about their favourite topic – independence.

Breaking up the United Kingdom has been a lifelong obsession for John Swinney. He’s been a member of the SNP for almost half a century.

He’s been their national secretary, their leader twice and was Nicola Sturgeon’s right-hand man for the best part of a decade.

Swinney was at the heart of the Yes movement in 2014 and, like every Nationalist, has refused to accept that Scotland voted decisively to remain part of our wonderful United Kingdom.

Ever since that vote the SNP have been agitating for another divisive referendum rather than focusing on the day job. And Swinney has used this campaign to ramp up his demands.

He wants another referendum to be held as soon as 2028. He has confirmed that if he wins a majority he will immediately demand talks with Sir Keir Starmer to grant him his wish.

And he’s said that the first vote of the new Scottish parliament will be to rubber-stamp that referendum strategy.

As someone who passionately believes in keeping our United Kingdom together, I am extremely worried that Keir Starmer is so weak and so prone to U-turning that he’ll cave into Swinney’s demands.

We know Swinney will not let up until he achieves his dream. He’s said he’ll even work with Sinn Fein to make it a reality.

That he would ‘enjoy the cooperation’ in order to ‘secure my objective of winning Scottish independence’.

For the SNP leader, not even the erstwhile political wing of the IRA are beyond the pale – as long as they help him to break up Britain.

Most right-minded Scots will be appalled that he wants to form an axis with a party indelibly linked to terror and destruction.

But ending the United Kingdom motivates him every day.

Swinney’s relentless focus on constitutional matters is also a perfect distraction technique. It avoids him having to try to defend the SNP’s woeful record over the last two decades.

And let’s be clear – he has been at the SNP top table almost every day since 2007, so that record is his record.

Two ferries that cost half a billion pounds and do not set sail.

A new prison that has gone up ten-fold in cost to £1billion – and is years behind schedule.

A wrecking ball taken to Scotland’s once world-leading education system.

Europe’s worst drug deaths rate.

Over 10,000 children without a permanent place to call home.

And people forced to pay the highest taxes in the UK, only to get poorer public services.

That is why he wants a first vote in the new parliament to be on his obsession. Not on bringing down people’s bills. Not on attracting new jobs to Scotland. Not on the crisis in Scotland’s health service.

He is hell-bent in wanting the next parliament to be once again hamstrung by constitutional chaos.

This is the last thing Scotland wants or needs. Another debate on independence barely registers on most voters’ priorities.

Yet the threat of another referendum is real, despite pundits and supposedly pro-UK parties spending this campaign trying to tell us differently.

Reform are fielding pro-independence candidates and Lord Offord has provided a roadmap to another referendum.

Nigel Farage has said that holding a rerun of 2014 would be quite reasonable.

Reform are not a Unionist party. Their emergence has been a gift to the SNP.

In key constituencies a vote for Reform today will only split the pro-UK vote and let Nationalist candidates through the middle, edging Swinney closer to winning that majority.

And the Scottish Labour party and the Lib Dems are just hoping the debate around independence goes away. They are dangerously complacent about John Swinney’s threats and haven’t even tried to mount an effective challenge on the issue.

So do not squander your chance to stop an SNP majority. Do not switch on your television on Friday when the results come in and rue that your vote could have stopped Swinney if only you’d cast it.

Join more and more Scots who know it’s just common sense to vote Scottish Conservative on their peach ballot paper.