Matthew Goodwin

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Matthew Goodwin
Dr Matthew Goodwin - Chatham House 2011.jpg
Goodwin in 2011
Born
Matthew James Goodwin

December 1981 (age 42)
Academic background
Alma mater
Doctoral advisor Roger Eatwell

Goodwin's research and writings focus on British politics, radical-right politics, and Euroscepticism. [28] He has written for the New Statesman , [29] The Guardian , [30] Prospect , [31] the Daily Mail , Evening Standard , Financial Times , The Spectator , The Daily Telegraph , The Times , UnHerd , and Spiked . He has appeared on BBC shows The Westminster Hour , [32] Any Questions , Moral Maze , Newsnight and Politics Live , Channel 4 News , GB News , and Planet Normal. [17]

A major theme of Goodwin's work has been to explain what he calls "the realignment" of British politics, which has seen the Labour Party becoming more dependent on the liberal, metropolitan middle-class for its votes while the Conservative Party appealed increasingly to working-class, non-university educated voters in former Labour heartlands (the "red wall"). [33] Goodwin recommends that political parties "lean into" this realignment by moving "left on economics and right on culture". [34] [35] [36] The morning after the Conservatives under Boris Johnson won the 2019 United Kingdom general election, Goodwin tweeted "it is easier for the right to move left on economics than it is for the left to move right on identity & culture." [37] Kenan Malik wrote that this view was based on an assumption the working class are socially conservative, and "the trouble with this argument is that the key feature of Britain over the past half century has been not social conservatism but an extraordinary liberalisation", citing examples such as attitudes to sexuality, premarital sex, and interracial relationships. [37] Goodwin also criticised the response of the "liberal left" following Brexit, stating, "This intolerance became most visible in the aftermath of the vote for Brexit when I watched many people on the ‘liberal’ left berate much of the rest of the country as an assortment of racists, bigots, gammons, and morons, all the while making it abundantly clear they had never actually met any of them." He was also critical of what he perceived as radical progressives’ shift from liberalism to authoritarianism and silencing of opposing views. [38] [ non-primary source needed ]

In 2023, Gerry Hassan wrote that "Goodwin is the populist right's academic of choice, but it seems to have escaped his notice that in the past half century right-wing Tory Governments have been in office for three-quarters of the time." [39] Others have characterized Goodwin as a "populist academic", [40] stating that he turned from observer into participant, becoming an apologist for populism. [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] James Ball argues that it was around 2016, with the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump's election as US president, that "Goodwin's public persona began to transform from that of someone explaining how to counter populist and far-right movements to someone explaining them, justifying their ends, or acting as something of an apologist for them". [8]

On diversity, "wokeism" and racism

Goodwin and his National Populism coauthor Roger Eatwell have argued about the United States that political polarisation has been caused by "an increasing fixation or near-total obsession among Democrats and the liberal left with race, gender and 'diversity'". [2] In 2018, Goodwin along with other commentators including Eric Kaufmann, Claire Fox, Trevor Phillips, and David Aaronovitch was due to take part in an event titled "Is Rising Ethnic Diversity a Threat to the West?" Some researchers argued that the event would encourage "normalisation of far right ideas" and criticised the framing of the title; [46] [47] [48] the debate was retitled "Immigration and Diversity Politics: A Challenge to Liberal Democracy?" [49]

According to Huw Davies and Sheena MacRae, Goodwin's "concerns about wokeism are a recurrent theme in his output". Goodwin has described "wokeism" as "a pseudo-religion". He has acted as an adviser to the Conservative Party and in the July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election supported "anti-woke campaigner" Kemi Badenoch, referring to her as "one of the most interesting Conservatives in British politics for a very long time". He supported the Conservative government's Rwanda asylum plan, which would entail deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, [17] and has advised the party to raise "the salience of cultural issues". Goodwin argues that left-wing parties, including Labour, have moved away from their foundational principles, increasingly focusing on identity politics, especially concerning sex and gender. [50] [51] [ non-primary source needed ] Kenan Malik argues that Goodwin now advocates a politics that a decade earlier he would have described as "toxic". [52]

In 2021, when the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, commissioned by Boris Johnson and chaired by Tony Sewell, argued that structural racism did not exist in the UK, Goodwin claimed this "dismantles the woke mob's central claim that we are living in a fundamentally racist society". [17] Goodwin has also highlighted various instances of public funding for initiatives that he views as symptomatic of this cultural shift. [53]

National Conservativism and UK riots

Goodwin spoke at the 2023 National Conservatism Conference, [54] [55] where he described the Conservative Party as in a "prolonged death spiral". [56] Goodwin told CNN that conservatives needed to "decide who they are and what they want to be". [57] For The Atlantic , Helen Lewis wrote that Goodwin gave "a typically doomy speech", which "segued into 10 minutes of pure populist beat poetry". [58] David Aaronovitch described Goodwin's speech as one of the two most "politically coherent" of the conference, calling him "the politics professor turned political entrepreneur". [59] Goodwin has responded to such criticisms in his writings, including in his articles "What Happened to Me?" [38] and "Have I Become Radicalised? [60] ". Explaining his decision to participate in the conference, Goodwin wrote: "I'm not a member of the Conservative Party. And unless something changes I don't currently plan on voting Conservative at the next election." He explained that his decision was because "one of the most interesting and important debates in politics right now is where conservatism goes next – not only here in Britain but globally." [61]

During the 2024 United Kingdom riots that followed the 2024 Southport stabbing, Goodwin criticised commentators who labelled the groups engaged in the violence as "far right", writing on X that there had been a "concerted & most likely coordinated effort by the elite class to inflate 'far right' to stigmatise & silence millions of ordinary people who object to mass immigration and its effects". Goodwin praised Hungary under prime minister Viktor Orbán, which he described as having "no crime", "no homeless people", "no riots" and "no unrest". Conservative commentator Tim Montgomerie called Goodwin's posts “incendiary” [5] and ITV News' Joel Hills asked "Matt, are you still at the University of Kent? I ask because it's so hard to imagine a serious academic publishing something like this." [5] Robert Ford, with whom Goodwin wrote Revolt on the Right in 2014, had by August 2024 "ended contact with Goodwin", saying "I tried for several years to reason with him on this but to no avail. Once I could see where this was heading I cut ties and became a more public critic". [8]

Political predictions

On 27 May 2017, Goodwin predicted that the Labour Party would not reach 38 per cent of the vote in the 2017 United Kingdom general election and said he would eat his book if they did. [62] As the party won 40.0% of the popular vote, Goodwin chewed one page out of his book, live on Sky News, on 10 June 2017. [63]

In March 2024, Goodwin wrote in The Sun that, "Eight years ago I did some political fortune-telling that led to people thinking I was insane. I was one of only a few analysts who predicted that not only would Britain vote to leave the EU but also that America would elect President Donald Trump". However, Will Jennings of the University of Southampton notes that when speaking at an event at the London School of Economics on the day of the Brexit referendum, Goodwin actually predicted a two-point Remain win. While Goodwin gave Trump a better chance of winning in the 2016 US presidential election than some pundits, he nonetheless wrote that Trump "would most likely fail". Goodwin also incorrectly predicted that Trump would win the 2020 election. [64]

Books

Honours

In 2014, aged 33, Goodwin was awarded the Richard Rose Prize by the Political Studies Association, which is given to one early-career academic each year for their contribution to research. [65]

His book, Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain, was long-listed for the 2015 Orwell Prize. [4]

In 2023, his book Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics was listed by the Financial Times as one of its politics books of the year. [66]

Related Research Articles

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Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics is a 2023 book by political scientist Matthew Goodwin, published by Penguin Books. The book's argument has proved to be controversial and it has attracted some highly critical reviews. Values, Voice and Virtue became a Sunday Times Bestseller, entering the non-fiction chart on 9 April 2023 at number 2 in general paperbacks. It was also listed among the Financial Times best summer 2023 books, selected by Gideon Rachman.

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