The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has announced their final parliamentary candidate, who will be standing in the Leicester West constituency. Heather Rawling has called for an alternative “budget for the working-class”, in the wake of the Chancellor’s budget of deepening cuts.

“This Tory-Lib Dem Coalition has been a disaster for the 99%, whilst the super-rich 1% at the top of society have never had it so good.”

Mrs Rawling, a retired teacher, and long-standing trade unionist, has spent her life involved with grassroots struggles for social change in Leicester explained:

“We live in one of the richest countries in the world, yet all the Coalition can offer us is another £30 billion worth of cuts, including £12 billion from welfare. With increasing demand for pay day lenders, and queues at food banks growing, people need an alternative to austerity.

“There is plenty of money in society. We just have to make sure that the super-rich pay the billions of pounds of tax that they owe us. This is something that TUSC promises to do.

“Labour is no longer a working-class party and has promised to carry on with the Tory cuts if elected. In January this year not one of Leicester’s three elected Labour MP’s voted against the Coalition Government’s ‘Budget Responsibility Charter’ — which meant they all agreed on the necessity for another £30 billion to be cut from the budget.

“In stark opposition to Liz Kendall, who is loyal to the Blairite faction of the Labour Party, I will put the needs of normal people before the needs of big business. I say this because Ms Kendall is one of the vice chairs of Progress, a pressure group acting within the Labour Party that was set up by Lord David Sainsbury.

“TUSC has no super-rich backers and is only funded only by members of the working-class. This contrasts strongly with Ms Kendall’s involvement with Progress which has received funding from corporate interests like the City of London Corporation and the accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.”

“Having organized itself as a fighting voice for the working-class, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition has attracted a record number of anti-austerity candidates this year, and so far is standing over 130 candidates in the General Election.”