This week UKIP Wandsworth holds its annual meeting, where we elect our chairman, secretary, treasurer and committee for the next year.

I will not be standing for reelection for the simple reason that I will be starting university on September, and it would be appropriate for fresh hands active in Wandsworth to take charge – and I guarantee that there will be a great deal of fresh hands after this AGM.

I utterly enjoyed being secretary.

I have leaned a variety of indispensable skills and political arts that I will take with me to university and beyond.

Campaigning across Wandsworth, I have met warm, helpful and wise people of all political leanings.

I did often pretend to be older than I was, and I was pretty good at it – partly courtesy of Bosnian Tunisian genes.

It was hilariously awkward when asked why I did not stand for anything and I had to say “frankly, because I am too young”.

We have made healthy inroads in this election.

Our candidates Chris, Trish and Przemek have done brilliantly to change perceptions in Battersea, Putney and Tooting respectively; building relationships that will be instrumental in the near future.

We were not able to counter the Conservative-spin fabricated fear of an SNP-Labour Government – neither was Labour or the Liberal Democrats. But because of the immense pressure UKIP have placed on the Tories, the British people are getting the say on the EU they deserve after 40 years of trickery.

However, the ramification of trickery is already being shown in the early stage of the referendum campaign. Cameron is trying to make this a referendum about his negotiation.

A negotiation doomed to achieving little. Nonetheless, one of the greatest things I have learned, after the election, is not to underestimate Tory spin.

On the surface of it, it seems easy for the out campaign to project the objective realities of EU membership that our freedoms, sovereignty and economy are constantly undermined by faceless EU officials, and win.

But we have the force of the Government against us, with financial, airtime and general regulations currently skewed towards the yes campaign.

History will look at my party as the party which made it possible to have a say on the biggest influence on our lives, and we must be more strategic than we have ever been if we want to be more than a mere footnote in history.

This means behaving in a nonpartisan manner throughout this campaign, to unite people of all political persuasions under a cause saying: we are Great Britain. We gave the world light.

No to the sidelines.

As for me, I see the youth as the major challenge and I will take it on. Young people are now rebellious against the wrong things: tilting at windmills.

I can see a spirit of the Chinese May 4 movement in 1919, where university students came together against national humiliation, blossom in this environment. Obviously, EU membership in itself is something which should get the blood boiling – but there is more.

Today, we have civil liberties constantly being undermined by Cameron and the EU, and when young people see this they will take the initiative to change this.

Also, we have a democracy designed for the 16th century; this time ignoring the voices of the 63 per cent. More if you account for tactical voting. These are the big abuses which need a fully mobilised opposition.

But thank you Wandsworth, the local Guardian, the local party for being amazing. I will still be around, worry not.

ALEXANDER BALKAN
Secretary, UKIP