TOMMY Sheridan has indicated he will quit politics if he fails yet again to get elected this May.

Voters last endorsed him 13 years ago, when he was elected a Socialist MSP for Glasgow.

However after a spectacular fall from grace that saw him jailed for perjury, the 51-year-old Solidarity leader has repeatedly failed to recapture his early electoral glory.

In another development, a candidate for Scotland’s newest left-wing alliance has quit after a row over her support for Sheridan.

Patricia Smith resigned as a RISE candidate after concerns were raised about her role during the Sheridan defamation and perjury trials.

Sheridan stood unsuccessfully in the 2007 Holyrood election, the 2009 European election, the 2009 Glasgow North East by-election, and the 2010 general election.

He was ineligible to stand at the 2011 Holyrood election because he was behind bars.

His wife Gail also failed to get elected to Glasgow City Council in 2012.

Now the fading firebrand has signalled that if he loses again, the coming Holyrood election will be his last crack of the whip.

In a post on Sheridan’s Facebook page last week, Gail announced she would be her husband's campaign manager when he stands as a Solidarity list candidate in Glasgow.

He will need six per cent of the vote to return to Holyrood, she wrote.

“Quite frankly, if he doesn’t get that level of support he will no longer be involved in politics.

“I’m fed up with the amount of time, energy and support people demand from him and how that diverts him from spending time from us, [daughter] Gabrielle and me.

“If less than 6 out of every 100 voters in Glasgow can’t be bothered voting for him, the message will be clear. He is not valued enough and we will demand he comes home to us permanently.

“I will fight hard on his behalf but at the end of the day, if the people of Glasgow don’t want him, that’s fine. We do.”

After coming to prominence in the anti-poll tax protests of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sheridan was first elected as a Glasgow councillor in 1992, a position he held for 11 years.

As leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, he was also elected an MSP in 1999 and 2003.

He quit as leader in 2004 to sue the News of the World for alleging he was a swinger - a fateful decision that split his party and led to him forming Solidarity. Although he won his defamation case, he was subsequently jailed for lying under oath.

Former Socialist MSP Colin Fox, now a RISE candidate in the Lothians, said: “It’s a long time since Tommy Sheridan was relevant to left-wing politics in Scotland. It’s part of RISE’s attraction that he’s not part of it.

“Glasgow voters have made it clear for years they can live without him. I think in May they'll tell him, ‘Fine, see you then. Enjoy your life."

Meanwhile, Sheridan's toxic legacy is also having an impact on RISE's Holyrood election campaign.

The newly registered party, which intends to raise £100,000 ahead of the election, is effectively a coalition of the SSP, the International Socialist Group (Scotland) and other left-wingers.

Senior SSP figures were astonished to see Smith, who backed up Sheridan’s version of events in court, unveiled as a RISE candidate in the Lothians.

Giving evidence in the 2006 civil case, Smith insisted Sheridan had denied the sex club allegations at a meeting of the SSP Executive two years earlier. "You were very, very clear about that," she told him in court.

In the perjury trial, Smith repeated her earlier evidence: "You said you had never been to a sex club."

Although RISE announced Smith’s candidacy in early January, her name has since disappeared from the slate.