Douglas Carswell
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Douglas Carswell MP |
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Carswell in 2009
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Member of Parliament for Clacton Harwich (2005–2010) |
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Assumed office 10 October 2014 |
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| Preceded by | Himself |
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In office 5 May 2005 – 29 August 2014 |
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| Preceded by | Ivan Henderson |
| Succeeded by | Himself |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
3 May 1971 London, England |
| Political party |
Conservative (before 2014) UKIP (2014–present) |
| Spouse(s) | Clementine Bailey |
| Children | 1 |
| Alma mater |
University of East Anglia King's College London |
| Religion | Anglicanism |
| Website | Official website |
John Douglas Wilson Carswell (born 3 May 1971) is a British politician who in 2014 became the first elected Member of Parliament for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), representing Clacton.
Formerly a member of the Conservative Party, Carswell was elected as the MP for Harwich in 2005 and Clacton in 2010. In August 2014, he changed his political allegiance to UKIP and announced his resignation as an MP, thereby necessitating a by-election in which he stood and was returned as a UKIP MP. He explained that he was joining UKIP out of a desire to see "fundamental change in British politics" and because he believed "many of those at the top of the Conservative Party are simply not on our side. They aren't serious about the change that Britain so desperately needs." In 2016 Carswell admitted that he “jumped ship with the express goal of changing the image of UKIP and ensuring that it was an asset rather than a liability in the referendum campaign…to decontaminate the brand”.
Carswell is the son of two doctors of medicine. He lived in Uganda until his late teens. His father, Wilson Carswell, a respected Scottish doctor and Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, diagnosed the first confirmed Ugandan cases of HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s, and was one of a number of people engaged in drawing the world's attention to the unfolding pandemic. His father's experiences in Uganda were the inspiration for the character Dr Nicholas Garrigan in Giles Foden's novel The Last King of Scotland. Carswell later attributed his libertarianism to his experiences of the "arbitrary rule" of Idi Amin.
Carswell was educated at two independent boarding schools for boys: St Andrews School in Turi in Kenya in East Africa, and Charterhouse School in Godalming in Surrey in Southern England, followed by the University of East Anglia (UEA), where he was taught by Edward Acton, and graduated with an upper second-class honours bachelor's degree in history in 1993. He then attended King's College London, graduating with a master's degree in British imperial history.
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Wikipedia