Ukip's first elected MP Douglas Carswell, who says it's offensive to dislike foreigners

For all the problems in the modern world, most people living in most parts of the planet are better off in 2014 than they were in 2013. People today generally live longer, healthier, more prosperous lives than their parents or grandparents. And 2015 is likely to be even better.

Why is life getting better for most people? Because we have become ever more interdependent. Instead of each family, village or country trying to do everything for itself, we have learnt how to do things for each other. As a consequence, there is more for everyone.

Far from being Merrie Olde England, life in pre-industrial Britain was grim. Infant mortality was staggeringly high, hunger a constant feature of childhood. Life for the average farm labourer in my part of Essex meant more than 80 hours of unrelenting slog each week.

For as long as folk in Essex depended only on other Essex folk for what they had, they did not have very much of it; books, cloth and candles were luxuries.

What was true for Essex was true for most communities throughout the world. But then England discovered a remarkable trick; how to depend on others – those outside our counties, then our country and even continent – to provide us voluntarily with the things we needed.

There has never been anything splendid about isolation. It was our interdependence that put the Great into Great Britain – and it is what sustains our living standards today. In such a world, a dislike of foreigners is not merely offensive, but absurd.

Instead of having to produce most of what we eat within a few miles of where we live, our supermarket shelves are crammed with produce from every country under the sun. Over-consumption is now a bigger public health problem than under-consumption.

Our homes are filled with washing machines, iPhones and other modern gizmos from all around the world. Each of those gadgets is itself a product of human interdependence; the microchips made in Japan or South Korea, moulded plastic via Gulf oil, software written by coders in Hoxton or Mumbai.

Human interdependence has not only raised living standards here in our country. It is the motor of human progress that has lifted human kind from the swamps to the stars. Globalisation is drawing almost all of humanity into a vast, sprawling network of innovation and exchange.

The fundamental challenge for any government – including a Ukip-backed administration – is how we might manage and enhance our interdependence in the decades ahead. Thus far, the established parties in Westminster have done a terrible job of preparing us for the future.

Vital, if Britain is to thrive, is the ability of Britons to trade freely and openly with the world. Not only are we trapped inside the only declining trade bloc in the world, being in the EU prevents us from having the open trade relationships with the parts of the world that are growing.

The EU, beholden to various lobby interests, refuses to sign a free trade deal with India. While Switzerland has concluded a trade agreement with China, the EU has failed to. Rather than enhancing commercial interdependence, Brussels recently fined the UK because we failed to charge high enough protectionist trade tariffs on certain Chinese imports.

Far from being a party that tolerates pejorative comments about people’s heritage and background, Ukip in 2015 has to show that we have a serious internationalist agenda. We stand to realign our trade relations precisely because we wish to join in with the rest of the world.

Mr Carswell with Ukip leader Nigel Farage campaigning ahead of the Clacton-on-Sea by election in October

Increased interdependence is going to mean ever greater labour mobility – not just between countries but between continents.

Voters, in my view, will only accept the labour mobility required if we first control our borders. Preparing for the future means putting in place an immigration system capable of saying a cheery, welcoming ‘Yes’ to doctors from Singapore or scientists from south Asia, and a polite ‘No, thank you’ to someone with a criminal record, or an inclination towards welfare dependence. Angry nativism must have no part in it.

Technology already exists that allows hundreds of thousands to log in and out of the London Underground each week. So why has no government managed to devise a system capable of logging folk in and out when they cross our borders?

No Ukip candidate should ever make the mistake of blaming outsiders for the failings of political insiders in Westminster.

In previous centuries, wealth was created by growing things. Then, during the industrial revolution, by making things. Increasingly, wealth is a matter of intellectual property – or of thinking things.

In this world, many British school leavers remain woefully ill-equipped for the skills that they are going to need. Education reform – first under Tony Blair, then David Cameron – has been watered down by vested interests.

If Britain is to flourish in the future, we need a government prepared to take on the vested interests, not only in education, but throughout the wider economy. Instead we seem to have governments beholden to different corporate interests.

Mr Carswell says: 'Ahead of May’s General Election, we now have to show the whole country that we have what it takes to win big

Banks have been endlessly bailed out. Far from competing to attract funds from depositors with generous interest payments, many banks depend on cheap credit handouts from government.

The energy market is fixed against the householder. Rather than competing to supply customers with energy at a price they might be willing to pay, energy is generated to comply with quotas.

It’s not just the economy that is rigged in the interests of a few. Our political system has become a cosy cartel run in the interests of career politicians looking to get into Parliament.

Britain desperately needs political reform to inject a large dose of choice and competition back into politics. Only then can we be certain that the full spectrum of policy options will be considered by policy makers to meet the challenges that lie ahead.

Ukip has had a remarkable year. No longer a mere protest party, we won the European elections and showed that we have what it takes to win seats in Parliament.