GLASGOW STUDENTS are standing alongside Geroge Galloway for the Respect Coalition Against Cuts Party in this week’s Scottish elections, in opposition to UK government spending cuts that are expected to impact heavily on the budget of the next Scottish Government.

Students Ferial El Ayeb, James Foley and Ryan Stewart are all on the Respect party list for the city, with Galloway calling his fellow Coalition Against Cuts candidates “a very strong team.”

Foley is features editor of the Glasgow University Guardian. He also protested in London against cuts at the end of March in the Trade Union Congress (TUC) mass demonstration, while El Ayeb and Stewart are students at Strathclyde University and Glasgow Central College respectively.

Galloway is aiming to make a political comeback in the city in which he served as an MP in Westminster for 18 years.

He has promised his party’s representatives would oppose higher education cuts in Scotland and retain the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), scrapped in England but maintained by the SNP Scottish Government.

The party also wants to bring about political reform, has pledged to vote against any Scottish budget cuts, and has said it will not form coalition with either an SNP or Labour-led government. Galloway has promised that “nothing will ever be the same again” if he is successfully elected.

Angela McCormick, second on the party list, told the Socialist Worker, “There are huge cuts in education, with courses and departments being slashed.” She added, “There’s also a widening pay gap among education workers and their bosses—coupled with attacks on pensions for teachers and lecturers.”

Galloway needs only six per cent of the regional list vote for Glasgow to secure a seat in the Scottish Parliament. Previous Scottish elections have witnessed Green Party and Scottish Socialist Party candidates elected on the regional ballot.

Galloway rose to political prominence in 2005 when he left the Labour Party thanks to his staunch and vocal opposition to the war in Iraq.
The same year he ran as a Respect candidate for Westminster constituency Bethnal Green and Bow against Labour candidate Oona King, and overturned her 10,000-seat majority. He contested the newly formed Poplar and Limehouse in the same city in the 2010 Westminster election, but finished third behind Labour and the Conservatives.

In 2009, Gallwoay initially announced he would be standing as a candidate in the election of a new Rector at the University of Edinburgh, only to pull out of the race and give his backing to eventual winner Iain McWhirter.

He also appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006,where he was branded a “laughing stock” by a fellow MP for pretending to be a cat and lick cream out of actress Rula Lenska's hand.