Douglas Carswell

Clacton by-election speech

Extract from acceptance speech, Clacton by-election, October 10th 2014:

"To the electorate of Clacton, my gratitude. I answer first foremost and last to you: you're my boss, I will not let you down.

To my new party I offer these thoughts. Humility when we win, modesty when we're proved right. If we speak with passion, let it always be tempered by compassion.

We must be a party for all Britain and all Britons, first and second generation as much as every other. Our strength must lie in our breadth. If we stay true to that there is nothing we cannot achieve....

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, said Abraham Lincoln famously at Gettysburg.

Those were not his words. Those were the words of that greatest of Englishmen, John Wycliffe, translator of the Bible.

Wycliffe's words were a precursor to an extraordinary transformation. Changes in technology that redefied the relationship between the governing and the governed. So, too, in our own time.

Whether you sit astride a mass of power in Westminster or in banking, in Whitehall or in Brussels, Wycliffe's words will become ever more insistent.

The governing can no longer presume to know what is right for the governed. Crony corporatism is not the free market. Cosy cartel politics is not meaningful democracy.

Change is coming with the realisation that things can be better. It is an honour to be a part of that this evening."

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