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The General Election is fast approaching, but just how much do you know about the people competing for your votes?

Here the Telegraph aims to help you understand the people behind the parties and the policies in Coventry.

We asked all the city’s prospective MPs seven questions which cover important issues, such as saving the green belt, and more light-hearted matters – such as taking on an army of mouse-sized Nigel Farages.

Here’s how Dave Nellist, Trade Union and Socialist Coalition candidate for Coventry North West, responded.

1) Why do you want to be one of Coventry’s MPs?

Whatever mix of parties forms the next coalition, for ordinary people in Coventry austerity will continue.

Based on the policies of the main parties Coventry Council are planning a further £50million of cuts – threatening every library, community centre, children and family centre, and axing another thousand jobs, denying the chance of decent employment to young people in our city.

Coventry urgently needs someone who will go to parliament to oppose austerity, not carry it out. I think my record in the House of Commons and on the city council shows I’m the best candidate to do that.

2) Protecting the green belt was top of the list in the ‘Coventry Manifesto’. Do you agree that it should be saved from development?

Coventry urgently needs more good quality, council-built affordable accommodation. Around 20,000 families are on the waiting list, but the council’s target for developers to provide affordable housing has been little under 400 a year.

There are plenty of properties in the city in disrepair which could be brought back into social use, tower blocks and office blocks which could be converted, and brownfield sites, which could provide thousands of homes before we need to touch the greenbelt. My work, for example, together with hundreds of local families, to protect the Charterhouse as public open space shows my record.

3) Would you rather be attacked by 100 mouse-sized Nigel Farages or one Nigel Farage-sized mouse?

I would defeat either by telling the truth. Nigel Farage is a public-school educated, ex-Tory ex-banker who poses as anti-establishment, but is anything but!

TUSC was set up to give a socialist alternative to the real problems people do face of low paid insecure employment, of long housing waiting lists, of pressure on public services – by attacking the real cause: the unequal distribution of wealth in the fifth richest country on the planet. Not by blaming recent arrivals to this city, whether from Liverpool, Limerick, Lahore or Latvia – or even Yorkshire, where I came from 40 years ago.

4) What’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever experienced on the campaign trail or in politics?

There’s lots of examples: from speaking to thousands during the Poll Tax campaign – to sharing a TV chat show with Barry Manilow and Douglas Adams.

But if I was forced to pick one it was arriving at the Commons in 1983 as the second youngest Labour MP to be told I was sharing an 11ft square, windowless office with the youngest, one Tony Blair.

We lasted four weeks, before he found an office with Gordon Brown – so I suppose if you want to blame anyone for throwing those two together and starting new Labour, it could be me.

5) Coventry’s ring road is a bit like Marmite. Do you love it or hate it? What about the rest of the city’s road network?

For drivers it works well, but it has acted as a ‘Berlin Wall’ around the city centre. I think the wider issue of transport across the city needs a major public debate.

For years I’ve argued that public transport should be brought back into public ownership and then, within the city, made free.

The amount of money that could be saved by reducing unnecessary car journeys would make life easier and more pleasant for everyone. That used to be the policy of the Labour Party until 1986. Other cities do have partial city centre free transport (such as Manchester).

6) Has Coventry been treated fairly by central government in the past five years and what would you change?

Yes, and if elected I would argue that government should reinstate funds stolen from Coventry by means of austerity cuts.

Over the last seven years if you add up all the cuts made by government to essential services such as those provided by the city councils, it’s £80 billion. That’s exactly the same as the total bonuses paid in the banking and finance industry.

We are losing essential services, such as the employment service for the vulnerable, and thousands of local people now rely on food banks so millionaire bankers who caused this crisis can have bonuses. It’s immoral.

7) People often say politics is boring, so tell us something interesting about yourself.

Socialists believe in changing the world, not just managing a growing unequal society.

We go ‘into politics’ for what we can put into it, not what we can take out of it. I spent nine years as a Member of Parliament in Coventry taking only the average wage of a skilled worker in our factories – in today’s money, my family forego over £300,000.

I think the starting point for MPs should be that they live in the area they represent and are on the same wages as most people – now that would make politics more interesting!