Last week I wrote about how, as a moderate independence supporter, I’m struggling to vote SNP. The column prompted an intelligent debate on The Herald’s letters pages, and a distinctly unintelligent, downright ugly, furore on social media.

Bluntly, my position is this: the SNP is useless in government. While certainly the manic, dangerous Tory Government has exacerbated Scotland’s woes, the SNP has done little to mitigate problems and often made matters worse.

As witness for the prosecution, I bring forward the huge cut to affordable housing when there’s 10,000 children homeless. Next for the prosecution: the ScotWind deal which saw Nicola Sturgeon flog national assets like an avowed Thatcherite.

The SNP whines, blames and divides. It pretends to be socially liberal while stocked to the gunnels with social conservatives. It uses the bait of independence as a long con, keeping the gullible on side, when there’s no plan for independence.

So I’m basically done with the party, and now considering whether to vote Labour for the first time since 2003. The Iraq War was the final straw for me, as a once lifelong Labour supporter.

What keeps the possibility of me voting SNP alive, is my local MP Chris Stephens, a good, decent politician (not many of them around) as far as I can see. Indeed, he reached out to me in friendly fashion after last week’s article offering to make the case for why I should vote SNP. I respect that.

What I didn’t respect was the abuse I was subjected to online from SNP supporters for daring to question the party. Not only is that cultishness part of the reason I’m so sick of the SNP, but it’s hardly a great tactic to hurl insults at someone who has voted for your party and might again. Ever considered that?

However, the worst attacks came from Alba party members. A Yes voter contemplating backing Labour seems tantamount to heresy for this coterie of cranks. One prominent Alba member told me to "go home to Ulster’" I’m from Northern Ireland. Nice work on the bigotry there, Alba.

Yet, when it comes to Labour, I know zero about my local candidate in Glasgow south-west, Dr Zubir Ahmed. I’ve received no campaign literature. I’ve visited his website but it tells me next to nothing about his beliefs.

That vagueness, that death of vision, is key. Keir Starmer may think that by promising as little as possible his "Ming vase"theory of campaigning will hold up until polling day: that he won’t drop a clanger and blow the election. How many times has Starmer u-turned on promises which offer real vision, because he cravenly fears the Tory press?

For me, that’s not good enough. I want to vote for values, not PR. My major stumbling block is Labour’s refusal to reverse the hateful two-child benefit cap. This prevents parents from claiming benefits for more than two children. It’s one of the greatest drivers of child poverty. Ending it would lift 250,000 children out of poverty.

Labour’s refusal to commit to ending this vindictive, sadistic policy sickens me. I won’t mark an X on a ballot for a party which claims it wants to end child poverty whilst allowing this affront to continue. The claim is, in fact, a lie.

READ MORE BY NEIL MACKAY

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Anas Sarwar was banging on about the party’s “anti-child poverty strategy” this week. How can he call it a strategy if his boss retains the two-child cap? There’s no strategy, just empty rhetoric. At least the SNP created the Scottish Child Payment, one of its few good policy decisions.

Today, children are getting shorter and sicker due to austerity - in other words, making children suffer is a choice politicians are happy to make. The Food Foundation found that the average height of five-year-olds is falling. Doesn’t that enrage you? How can any politician read that fact and not exert every muscle to improve the lives of children?

Believe me, I’m looking for reasons to vote Labour. I want the Tories gone - indeed destroyed - and Labour will do that, not the SNP. But how can I vote for a party which will just mimic in soft-focus the policies of the government it defeated?

Labour claims it offers "change". Well then really change this country. Overturn every ill the Tories visited on Britain. Dismantle austerity. Protect children. Help the poor.

SNP MP Chris StephensSNP MP Chris Stephens (Image: Getty)

I want to believe Starmer is playing possum here - that he’s being Tory-lite in order to win power and when in office he’ll be more radical. But I doubt it. There’s an appalling video online of Starmer confronted by the child of two working parents. She tells him she sleeps in a onesie as her family can’t afford heating. Starmer laughs and starts talking about how his son used to wear onesies. A child is telling you about the poverty she’s enduring, Sir, so listen to her. Respond with compassion.

Rachel Reeves proudly tells banking bosses their “fingerprints” are “all over” Labour’s manifesto. Why are the fingerprints of the poor not all over the manifesto also?

Simply getting the Conservatives out isn’t good enough. I won’t vote for a party which promises similar shameful policies just with a smile rather than a sneer.

If Labour merely apes the Tories in some watered-down form, then Britain is on dangerous ground. Poverty will deepen and eventually voters will tire of Labour and turn to the right again. With the Tories imploding, it’ll be Nigel Farage waiting to provide the alternative.

I won’t help Labour pave a path to hell, either for poor children or Britain as a whole.

So my vote remains in play. The SNP can still win me back. Contrition for the failures in government, and a vow - signed in blood preferably - to pass good laws which help the poor would see me return. Possibly.

I’m set to meet my local SNP MP soon to talk matters over. If I look Chris Stephens in the eye and believe what he says, then I know where my X is going. I’ve the feeling Labour doesn’t care to make its case to voters like me, and that says it all really, and helps me make up my mind.