Douglas Carswell, the Co-Founder of Vote Leave, the official campaign that won the Brexit referendum in Britain, has been appointed President and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
Carswell was a Member of Parliament in Britain for 12 years. He was re-elected every time he stood for a vote, and in 2014 he achieved one of the largest swings in any election in British history.
He co-founded Vote Leave, the official campaign that won the Brexit referendum. He was instrumental in helping to ensure that a Brexit vote was held and then won. He switched parties and forced a by-election to help put the issue at the top of the political agenda.
Carswell has also served as an advisor to the United Kingdom government on trade as a non-executive director at the Department of International Trade. He believes that free trade helps drive human progress.
He was personally inspired by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Milton Friedman when growing up, and Carswell is knowledgeable and passionate about free-markets and individual liberty. He is the author of four books, as well as numerous papers and articles for leading free market think tanks.
A Fellow at the John Locke Institute, Carswell sits on the Advisory Council of one of Britain’s leading think tanks, the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has published works by no less than twelve Nobel Prize laureates.
Carswell received a degree in history at the University of East Anglia, before reading for his Masters’ degree at King’s College, University of London.
Regarding his desire to move to America, Carswell noted, “I believe in American exceptionalism. Americans flourish when they are free. The US is the greatest republic the world has ever known because she is the most successful experiment in freedom that there has ever been.
It is because I was not born American that I appreciate what sets this great country apart. America has been sustained by a set of ideals enshrined in the Constitution; liberty, respect for private property, the rule of law, and equality before the law.”
During the press conference, Interim CEO Lesley Davis stated that, “[t]he appointment of Douglas as the new CEO is an incredible win not only for the Center, but for Mississippi as a whole. Douglas is an international leader in the fight for freedom and a generational talent with a tremendous vision for both our organization and the state.”
In his announcement, Carswell noted the importance of MCPP and Mississippi’s leadership on public policy issues, “[t]he best way to win the fight for freedom again is to take the initiative here in states like Mississippi, not to look to what is happening in Washington DC.
The great genius of the American system that the Founding Fathers created is that it is decentralized, with different states free to trial various policy approaches. Good ideas come from where ordinary Americans are, not inside the Washington ‘beltway’ where politicians happen to congregate.
By advancing the ideas of liberty at the state level, led in our state by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, we can win this fight for freedom.”
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Release from the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
Magnolia Tribune
