I am a European living in this country and I have just put myself forward as a candidate for the Brexit Party in the North West. I want to offer my experience of how the EU treats people who don’t agree with it. In June 2016, unlike most in this country, I felt that I had seen it all before. It took me back to 2nd June 1992 when the Danish people stood up to the might of the European establishment and voted ‘No’ to the undemocratic Maastricht Treaty. I was part of that campaign in Denmark and the sense of relief and elation in 2016 was on par with what I had felt over two decades before. The relief, however, was short-lived. We were lulled into a false sense of victory by the political class. What is happening in the UK now also happened in Denmark in 1992: the establishment did not like the answer the people gave them, so we were forced to vote again based on threats and spurious promises. The arguments in 1992 are the same as the arguments in 2019: the EU has a huge democratic deficit and Brussels is unaccountable, secretive and distant. This takes power away from people: a healthy democracy is when you bump into your elected representative in your local corner shop, not when you have to fly to Brussels to lobby them. The power in the EU does not lie with the elected politicians, it lies with the bureaucrats – and who is overseeing the bureaucrats? This is not democracy; do we really want a system in which money equates to political influence? And can anybody understand why the Labour Party is in favour of this? This is the Labour Party which was founded for the purpose of defending working-class communities against the elite. Now we find the Labour Party siding with the establishment and turning its back on those very communities. Five million Labour Leave voters have been left politically homeless and I say to those people: the Brexit Party will speak up for you. I have worked as an NHS dentist for over 20 years with people from all over the world, both from inside and outside the EU. At one point we had staff from more than thirteen countries – and that’s without counting the different countries from which our 130,000 patients come. Working with different people enriches your life and it is important that after leaving the EU we can still get the workforce from abroad we need. For this we need a system which allows immigration but which makes sure we get the immigration we need. I am European; I even have an Italian rescue dog! I am far from being one of the 17.4 million xenophobes whom Chuka Umunna has claimed are among his fellow citizens. Support for Brexit is not only to be found on the right of the political spectrum, it is across the board, and the Brexit Party is a perfect example of that. Far-right parties do not speak for me, nor do they speak for the majority of this country. Having come here as a European immigrant over twenty years ago, I can safely say that the rhetoric which comes from those on the far right does not represent what I have experienced; Britain has been open and welcoming to me. The Brexit Party brings together people from all backgrounds and challenges the dangerous stereotype which media outlets like the BBC push. We Brexiteers are not a monolithic group of ignorant and uneducated voters who blindly supported Brexit because they liked Boris Johnson. How will they marry up the idea of me – a socialist, NHS dentist and trade union representative, who used to live in a commune – with being a Brexiteer? Britain is my home, I have brought my children up in this country and have worked, paid taxes and created jobs here for over 20 years. What happened in Denmark was that democracy was overturned, voters ignored and the decision of the people cast aside. I will not let that happen to the country I now call home. Voting for the Brexit Party is the way we can stop history repeating itself.