Matt Goodwin: A charlatan for our times
What have we done to deserve this?
Nigel Farage’s Reform Party has just announced that it is running Matt Goodwin as its candidate in the forthcoming Manchester by election for the House of Commons.
Goodwin is truly a man for our times. An academic turned radical right influencer, unstoppable loudmouth and political entrepreneur. He has long known that the way to success in modern politics is to be willing to do anything to please your core vote.
Below is my profile of the charlatan. They say we get the politicians we deserve. I wonder what the bloody hell the British did to deserve Matt Goodwin – whatever it was, it must have been very bad indeed.
I first came across Matt Goodwin in 2018. The then professor of politics at Kent University was compiling lists of suspects, as all closet – and not so closet – authoritarians do.
Specifically, Goodwin had compiled a list of journalists he claimed were guilty of disparaging the millions who voted to leave the EU in 2016. I had, apparently, greeted their solemn democratic choice by sneering that it was as if the “sewers have burst.”
Odd, I thought, I am sure I would remember comparing Brexit voters to sewage. I Googled myself and discovered the sly professor had pulled a move ideally suited to the propaganda needs of a right-wing elite that poses as the people’s friend.
In June 2016, I described how Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings had begun their Brexit campaign with a solemn promise that they would never play the race card.
We do “not need to focus on immigration,” Cummings said. The essential task for his respectable “Leave” campaign was not to incite fears of foreigners, but “to neutralise the fear that leaving may be bad for jobs and living standards.”
His high-mindedness didn’t last. As referendum day approached, Gove, Johnson and Cummings decided to pull whatever trick they could to get over the line. The race card was a winning card, they decided. They switched to issuing the fake news that 76 million (mainly Muslim) Turks could head our way if we didn’t leave.
Looking at their breach of promise and incitement of fear, I said “it is as if the sewers have burst.”
I told Goodwin on Twitter that he was confusing my criticism of the powerful with criticism of the powerless. He ignored me.
I realised then that the professor did not abide by the normal academic standards of accuracy but was, when it came down to it, a bit of a slob. And not just any old slob but a sycophantic slob, who slobbered all over the powerful.
Any student of politics, let alone an actual professor of politics, ought to be able to see through the trick he pulls. Here’s is how it works.
