With the in/out referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the European Union potentially only four months away, the Cambridge campaign to leave the EU (‘Brexit’) is beginning to gather pace. Last week, it hosted its first speaker of term, UKIP MP Douglas Carswell.

Speaking at Gonville and Caius College to an audience of students and members of the public, Carswell was passionate about the case for leaving the European Union. Pointing out the economic troubles that the European Union has faced, compared with the rapidly expanding economies of Asia, Africa and South America, he argued that Britain has effectively locked itself into the only declining part of the world economy.

His main argument hinged on the principles that he perceived Britain stands for and the discrepancy between this and the way that the European Union is governed. “I personally think there’s something pitiful about a prime minister trying to pretend that somehow blaming Polish plumbers claiming in-work benefits is the issue. This isn’t about who is claiming in-work benefits or out of-work benefits,” Carswell stated.

Perhaps unexpectedly to many, he linked the case for leaving the European Union to socialism and social equality. “It’s to the great credit of the centre-left of this country that the Left has often been on the right side of many debates,” Carswell surmised, referring to the Chartists and the Suffragettes, and illustrating that the Left has traditionally advanced the idea that more people should be able to vote and have control over their government.

He concluded that the European Union has “subverted democracy”, adding that Britain’s continued membership of the EU means that “it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the same crowd would get together in places like Davos and decide things for us at our expense.”

Taking aim at the alleged growth of special interest representation in the EU, Carswell said: “one of its huge growth industries is lobbying [...] the reason for that is because so many big businesses today no longer spend their marketing budgets doing what they should do in a free society, which is persuading willing buyers to buy what they sell at a price they are willing to pay. They spend their marketing budgets hiring an army of lobbyists in Brussels, an army of lobbyists who they rely on to rig the rules for the advantage of huge corporations.”

He added: “I know that there are many of the Left who are good and decent and honourable people. How is it that so many on the political left of this country have ended up in the position where they are on the side of rich bureaucrats imposing austerity, in the name of the banking union, on tens of millions of southern Europeans?”

He ended his speech by concluding that he hoped that people would recognise that “[w]hatever your politics, we will be better off as a country if we can make decisions for ourselves.”

In person, Carswell is imposing, and was polished and impenetrable in his speech. Speaking exclusively to Varsity, he revealed his personal motivations for campaigning to change Britain’s relationship with Europe.

He spent his formative years growing up in Uganda, and described how he was taught an idea of Britain that still resonates for him: “I’ve always thought of Britain as an exceptional place. We are run by mediocrities who are so unambitious for this country. Britain could be so much better than it is – there’s a much bigger world out there, and by being in the European Union I think we cut ourselves off from it.”

Speaking about UKIP, he remained optimistic. “All political parties are coalitions. There is certainly a different emphasis and different focus and tone in different parts of UKIP, as there are in any political party, but on the issue of EU membership we are all on the same side. It’s important that we rise to the occasion, and we’ll rise to the occasion not by necessarily trying to spearhead the campaign as a party, but by forming a coalition with members from different parties who all want the same thing.

“I think that there is a profound change happening in politics and governance throughout the West, and it manifests itself in many different ways. But there’s a common theme emerging, and that is people are no longer willing to be told how to live their lives by politicians. Fundamentally because we live in an age where people have so much control over what they can do – the music they listen to, the thoughts they have. They’re simply not willing to put up with a one-size-fits-all way of governance. In the future I think power will need to be devolved, to local councils and city mayors. I think that UKIP can play a key role in this. We have to break the central cartel that’s in Westminster, and leave a real alternative to establish parties as needed.”