John Douglas Wilson Carswell (born 3 May 1971) is a British politician. He is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Harwich.
Biography
Carswell is the son of two doctors and spent much of his early childhood in Africa where his parents worked amongst some extremely poor communitiescitation needed. His father, Wilson Carswell, a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, diagnosed the first confirmed cases of HIV/AIDS in Uganda in the early 1980s and was instrumental in drawing the world's attention to the unfolding pandemic.citation needed
Douglas went to St Andrew's School, Turi, in Kenya and then Charterhouse School. He read history at the University of East Anglia and subsequently at King's College London. He worked as Corporate Development Manager for Television Broadcasting in Italy from 1997-9, and as Chief Projects Manager for INVESCO from 1999 before entering politics. At the 2001 General Election he was the Conservative candidate at Sedgefield, the constituency of the Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair's majority fell by 7,500 votes, and Carswell managed to increase the Conservative share of the vote by 3.1% of the electorate, albeit with the decreased turnout meaning he only won 14 more votes.[1] In the months before the 2005 General Election, Douglas worked in the Conservative Party's Policy Unit, reporting to David Cameron.
Member of Parliament
Carswell was elected to Parliament at the 2005 General Election for the constituency of Harwich defeating the sitting Labour MP Ivan Henderson by 920 votes. Carswell made his maiden speech on 28 June 2005 in the debate on the Identity Cards Bill. [2] He is a member of Conservative Friends of Israel. Carswell serves on the House of Commons Education Select Committee.
Shortly after entering Parliament, Douglas wrote a publication "Direct Democracy; an agenda for a new model party". This publication has been described by the Spectator Magazine (June 2, 2007) as "one of the founding texts of the new, revitalised Toryism". It sets out much of the thinking that has now become central to the Conservatives under David Cameron MP.
Carswell has also founded Direct Democracy, a group of like-minded modernisers within the party committed to making localism the core of the Conservative Party's platform. The group has been described by The First Post as one of the most influential Tory think tanks.[3]
Carswell was the only MP to publicly call for the Speaker to be fired after his failure to ensure greater transparency as to how the House of Commons is run.
Dod's political biography describes Douglas as being "Tall and Eurosceptic ... one of his party’s radical thinkers".
Carswell was described in the Sunday Times Magazine on July 27th 2008 as "one of the energetic young Tory modernisers elected to the Commons in 2005"
Carswell's blogsite is at www.TalkCarswell.com.
Publications
- Direct Democracy – Agenda for a New Model Party[4]
The Spectator magazine had this to say about Carswell’s publication Direct Democracy: “One of the founding texts of the new, revived Toryism was the 2005 pamphlet Direct Democracy, written by some of the brightest young Conservative thinkers, which argued compellingly that the party should embrace radical localism”.[5]
- "Paying for Localism,"[6]
- Chief author of "The Localist Papers"[7]
External links
References
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