SOME OF IRELAND’S socialist parties are to fight the next general election under a new united banner, they have announced today.

The ‘United Left Alliance’ will incorporate candidates from the Socialist Party, People Before Profit (which itself incorporates the Socialist Workers Party), the South Tipperary Workers and Unemployed Action Group, and another independent socialist group from Sligo.

The party says it will put forward “a real left alternative in the general election and challenge the austerity and capitalist consensus amongst all the parties in the Dáil”, which it says includes socialist parties Labour and Sinn Féin.

The alliance believes it will field up to 20 candidates in the election, including many who will stand significant chances of election, including Joe Higgins MEP, Seamus Healy, Richard Boyd Barrett and Clare Daly.

The alliance says it hopes to use the financial crisis as a platform for advancing a socialist agenda, referencing the performance of Joe Higgins (when he was a TD until 2007) who played what it calls an “outstanding role”.

It says it would eliminate the four year budget plan if it was elected, and does not believe in the need of cuts to resolve the current financial crisis, instead believing that increased taxation on the well-off could help to tackle the budget deficit.