Bernie Sanders

You may have seen in other local press that US politician Bernie Sanders was a guest speaker at Cambridge Union today.

Mr Sanders, who lost out to Hillary Clinton to become the Democrats' candidate in last year's presidential election, spoke for about an hour in front of a sell-out crowd, with the Cambridge News reporting that tickets for the event sold out in just 38 seconds.

Twitter/@DrNikiSol

Mr Sanders joins a long list of high-profile speakers at the union, including most recently Piers Morgan, Mary Berry and Stephen Fry.

Dr Niki Sol, a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin who was at the event, said that she "loved the fact that he was able to bring about a lot of different points that mobilised the audience".

"I thought he was a very dynamic speaker," she said.

"Bernie Sanders said that Donald Trump's idea to pull out of the Paris climate agreement was a stupid decision, which the audience agreed with."

On whether she thought it was important Mr Sanders came to the union, Ms Sol said she was "not sure".

"I thought it was an interesting choice. I don't know if it was important to him from a political perspective simply because he is a senator," she said.

"But I think that part of his job working for social justice is that he knows he needs to mobilise as many people beyond himself, which I think he saw as a great way to talk to a lot of influential people that may be in power in the future."

Reuters

The American politician Bernie Sanders, who was a US Democratic candidate for the Presidency, is to visit Sussex as part of the Brighton Festival. 

Mr Sanders built what was seen as an impressive campaign for the candidacy before finally throwing his support behind Hillary Clinton, who went on to lose to Donald Trump. 

Senator Sanders will speak about his new book Our Revolution at an event on Thursday 1 June.