A FORMER Clacton MP and one of the country’s leading Brexiteers will be taking up the top role at think tank in the USA.

Douglas Carswell, who was one of the founders and a director of the Vote Leave campaign, was only last month appointed by the Government as a non-executive director to the Department for International Trade (DIT) to support its “ambitious” trade policy agenda.

But Mr Carswell, who stood down as Clacton's MP in 2017, has now been appointed as the new president and chief executive of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, a free-market, conservative think tank based in Jackson, Mississippi.

Mr Carswell said: “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."

The think tank said Mr Carswell was "instrumental" in helping to ensure that a Brexit vote was held and then won.

Mr Carswell's re-election as a UK Independence Party in 2014 - after defecting from the Conservatives - helped to put pressure on former Prime Minister David Cameron to hold the referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.

The centre's interim chief executive Lesley Davis said: "The appointment of Douglas as the new chief executive is an incredible win not only for the centre, 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.”