IT IS Scotland’s most marginal seat and the Tories are so confident about taking it that their candidate John Lamont resigned as an MSP in order to run for Westminster for the fourth time.

That rankles with some voters in Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk but according to the political statistics website Electoral Calculus he has a 77 per cent chance of unseating SNP MP Calum Kerr.

Alison Currie of the Berwickshire Granarchists, an all-party group of retired women campaigning against the Tories, agrees the fight is hard.

“It is the fourth time that Lamont’s going to stand for Westminister and a few people are peed off about that, but at same time Berwickshire is quite a conservative sort of place and a lot of people think he is a nice young man because he turns up for every photo opportunity,” she said.

“Calum Kerr has done a fantastic job on issues like broadband and fishing but a lot of fishing communities think it is the EU that harmed them even though the Tories sold them out in the first negotiations and are going to do it again.”

Widely recognised as a two-horse race, it is Kerr and Lamont against LibDem Caroline Burgess and Ian Davidson, who was a Labour MP in Glasgow for 23 years.

There is no-one standing for Ukip and their 2.4 per cent of the vote in this constituency in the 2015 General Election is expected to go to the Tories.

With only a 328 majority, there is no doubt Kerr has a fight on his hands. The seat was traditionally always a contest between the Lib Dems and the Tories but in 2015 the UK swing against the Liberals along with the surge in the SNP vote in Scotland knocked Michael Moore into third place. It was a devastating blow for Moore, who had held the seat from its creation in 2005 and was MP for the predecessor seat of Tweeddale, Ettrick & Lauderdale from 1997 to 2005. There has been a strong Liberal presence in the area since the 1960s, with former Liberal leader David Steel representing the seat from 1965 to 1997.

In the recent council elections the LibDems, who had shared power with the SNP and Independents since 2012, had their representation cut from six to just two as the Tories took 15 seats, a gain of six. SNP representation stayed static at nine while there are eight Independents and no Labour or Greens.

There is no doubt the Tory surge was due to their emphasis on the Union in the run-up to the election. Rival parties say their campaigning leaflets were short on policies, with the top message being that a Tory vote would strengthen the Union. Despite the work of councils being more about dogs’ dirt and rubbish collections, the message appealed to the many Unionists in this constituency.

While the majority voted to remain in the European Union in the Brexit vote last year (58 per cent against 42 per cent on a 73 per cent turn out) only 33 per cent voted Yes in the Scottish independence referendum against a 67 per cent No vote.

One of the few places in the constituency to vote Yes was Galashiels, and it was the SNP vote here that helped Kerr to victory in 2015.

Socialist Graeme McIver, from Galashiels, says he is voting for Kerr to keep the Tories out. He thinks the SNP vote in the town will hold but is gloomy about the rest of the constituency.

“During the referendum campaign Gala was predominantly Yes but the rest of the Borders was very much No and what the Tories have been doing, quite cynically in my opinion, is putting indyref on all their leaflets without speaking about their policies. They are hoping that anyone who voted No will vote Conservative.

“Lamont resigning as an MSP shows cockiness but I hope that people remember this General Election is not about an independence referendum but about policies. If people are against independence they can vote No in a referendum, but don’t vote for the Tories now.”

Over in Duns, Yes Berwickshire campaigner Alex Wilson admitted: “It’s a difficult gig here. We have an elderly population and a lot of that tends to come from elsewhere in the UK where they have a different view. That is our most difficult market. Having said that, we have a number of folk that voted No last time who now want to vote Yes. I know an English guy who, with his German wife, voted No but they are now members of the SNP because of Brexit.

“It is going to be really hard but then again who would have thought a few years ago that we would now be trying to defend the seat? It is not natural SNP territory but the problem is that it is moving more towards the Tories because of the change in demographics.”

Frances Renton is a casualty of the Tory surge in the area, having been ousted from Scottish Borders Council after a decade as a councillor.

As a Liberal Democrat she says it pains her to say so but she thinks Lamont will triumph on June 8.

“John has got a lot of support although a number of people think he is disrespectful because he promised to give them his full commitment when he was elected to the Scottish Parliament,” said Renton.

She is realistic enough to recognise that her party’s vote is not likely to recover at this General Election, although she has high hopes for the Scottish Parliament by-election caused by Lamont’s resignation.

The vote for the Scottish Parliamentary seat is to be held on the same day as the General Election, to make matters even more confusing for voters in the Borders.

“People on the doorsteps are saying they will vote in the General Election to stop the SNP but they are also saying they will vote for our candidate in the Scottish Parliament election,” said Renton.

The LibDems' Catriona Bhatia is well known in the area as she is not only the daughter of David Steel but was a councillor and deputy leader of Scottish Borders Council for five years.

Bhatia is up against seasoned SNP campaigner Gail Hendry, Alex Salmond’s sister; Labour’s Sally Prentice, who caused controversy by suggesting that SNP voters in the seat should hold their noses and vote Labour on June 8; and the Tories’ Rachel Hamilton, who hails from Hertfordshire but now lives in the Borders and resigned as a list MSP to fight the seat.

Over in Hawick, Derick Tait, chairman of Future Hawick, thinks people are showing signs of being “fed up to the back teeth” of elections.

“There hasn’t been a lot of talk about it just now,” he said. “We’ve got Hawick Common Riding on the same day as the elections and I suspect there is more interest in that.”