On the election campaign

Our candidates get emails from all sorts of campaigning groups asking them to pledge support for particular measures they want. Here's the reply of Kevin Parkin, our candidate standing in Oxford East, to a questionnaire from a local cyclists' group:

Have you pledged your support for CTC’s Space for Cycling campaign?

My position is not one of the choices in the survey, e.g. I haven’t signed the pledge, not necessarily because I don’t support it as that I am not making any pledges (on any subject) as I am standing on the single issue of capitalism or socialism.

Do you support Cyclox’s ‘Cycletopia‘ to make Oxford the UK’s Premier Cycling City?

My position is not one of the choices in the survey as I am standing on the single issue of capitalism or socialism.

Why should people who cycle, and those who would like to cycle, vote for you in the May 2015 election?

Only if they agree with replacing the present, capitalist system of production for profit and ownership by the few with a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources.

If elected, how would you personally use parliamentary processes and your influence to promote Active Travel (cycling and walking) in your constituency?

I am standing as a delegate for those who want to replace capitalism by real socialism. If elected, I would take instructions on how to vote on specific issues from those who elected me.

Meanwhile, Danny Lambert, the Socialist Party candidate for Vauxhall had a lot to say at one of the open-air hustings. Danny told the audience he did not really want to be the MP. "I am just putting forward the case for socialism."

Making the case for socialism