MPs returned to Westminster yesterday after the summer recess, such as it was. I’ve always said recess is not the same as holiday and that was especially true this year! I and my team have been working from home since lockdown started and, with Scottish guidance being to continue to do that, we’ll not be changing soon.

Hundreds of people have been in touch for help during the coronavirus crisis and we’ve been working flat out throughout recess. I managed three days actual time off on a staycation around Stirling, which was beautiful. It was nice to switch the phone off for a bit and enjoy our wonderful country.

But we’re back and I arrived back in London on Monday to gather my wits and scope out what we’re doing for the next few months. There’s always a strange head-shift that has to happen when I return, to Brussels as it was for 15 years and now Westminster. The constituency aspects of work are really quite different to the work in Parliament.

I’m loving being a constituency MP. The joint team in Stirling with MSP Bruce Crawford has come together really well and it’s great representing the heart of Scotland, supporting businesses and building the case for independence there.

The Westminster end of things, I’m still adapting to. It has certainly been a baptism of fire; there are any number of crises that would take up all our attention in normal times but they’re all happening at once!

The coronavirus crisis remains a public health emergency and, as the days draw in and winter approaches, we all need to be mindful of the prospect of a second wave and continue to stick with the rules and do our best to keep each other safe.

London was noticeably busier than it was in the last weeks before recess, so I hope the message is still getting through here. Our job in that will be to highlight good practice in Scotland and to make the point to southern colleagues that we need more power, not less, to tackle it.

The economic crisis has been my main focus in Stirling. Jobs, jobs and jobs are going to be our focus as the gloss falls off the much-vaunted UK Government economic support to businesses. I’ve supported the schemes as far as they go, but they need to go further and be more refined. Even the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, which I initially dismissed as a cute gimmick, has been useful, actually one of the better targeted supports, and it should be brought back as we contemplate autumn.

The Scottish Government can’t borrow, so while the UK Government is doing that on our behalf it will take strong SNP voices to hold them to account when it comes to how they’re spending the money. Wasting a big chunk of it on a stamp duty holiday is ruinous and we need better targeting. SNP MPs will be fighting for Scottish jobs while we’re in this crisis.

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Brexit hasn’t gone away and to inflict this chaos on ourselves in the middle of winter and midway through a possible second wave is flat-out lunacy.

The talks continue this week

but without the urgency necessary and SNP MPs will need to be working hard to highlight the continued need for an extension and real focus on the consequences of this bizarre policy.

We will also be highlighting to our southern friends that Scotland doesn’t want a bar of it and the fact they are ramming it through underlines the democratic deficit in the UK on a daily basis.

The trade talks continue and we’re across these as well. There has been little detail so far and I suspect such deals as they will unveil will be all show and little substance. The fact the UK Government has appointed the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott as its cheerleader really does speak volumes.

WHILE there might not be much substance, there will be plenty shrill rhetoric to pick through. Be it farming standards or environmental and social rules, right up to privatising the NHS, trade talks could alter daily life significantly for Scots, and we need to make sure we’re there fighting.

The power grab legislation will be coming forward and it is in every sense an attack on Scotland’s powers. Not just the Parliament, but spending at every local authority, university, college, police, fire and NHS board will be subject to a politically appointed death panel. It rips up Donald Dewar’s devolution settlement, and make the case for independence. SNP MPs will fight it tooth and nail. As SNP shadow foreign secretary, I’ve a job to do in representing us on international matters. I’ve been clear that I’m not in the business of re-inventing wheels or pretending difference exists where it does not.

However, my role is to highlight where I think the UK is acting in a way Scotland would not, and being proactive in building the case for an independent Scotland as an international actor. That will take up a lot of my time in the coming months.

And above all that, my job is to build the case at home, in the UK and abroad for independence. Events are helping us in that effort, but we need to be smart about how we use the opportunities gifted to us by a weak and divided Tory Government.

Timing is all and I have said before that I think I am building more credibility in Stirling (which voted 60/40 No in 2014 but elected me with 51% December 2019) by focusing on the issues people are raising with me, and that’s the matters above.

But any issue can be made into an argument for more powers for Scotland and independence in Europe, and I’ll not be shy of doing so. Having been thrown out of my first Parliament, I really am working hard to be thrown out my second!