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Revision as of 11:08, 6 December 2024 by DeFacto (talk | contribs) (→Commentary: per WP:SIDEBAR)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) British political scientist (born 1981) This article is about the British academic. For the Australian rugby player, see Matt Goodwin. For the percussionist, see Matthew Goodwin (percussionist).

Matthew Goodwin
Goodwin in 2011
BornMatthew James Goodwin
December 1981 (age 42–43)
Academic background
Alma mater
Doctoral advisorRoger Eatwell
Academic work
DisciplinePolitical science
Institutions
Websitemattgoodwin.org Edit this at Wikidata

Matthew James Goodwin (born December 1981) is a British political scientist, political commentator and former academic recognised for his research on populism and right-wing movements.

Goodwin's most recent academic role was as a professor of politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, where he was employed for nine years before departing in July 2024. He also served on the Social Mobility Commission from September 2022 to 2023.

He is the author of the two Sunday Times Best Sellers: Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics and National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (co-authored with Roger Eatwell).

He is also the co-author of Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain (with Robert Ford), which was long-listed for the 2015 Orwell Prize.

Goodwin has a large following on websites like Twitter/X and Substack, where he is known for his often controversial right-wing political commentary.

Early life and education

Goodwin graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics and contemporary history from the University of Salford in 2003 and obtained a Master of Arts degree in political science from the University of Western Ontario in 2004. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree under the supervision of Roger Eatwell at the University of Bath in 2007.

Career

Academic

Goodwin was a research fellow at the Institute for Political and Economic Governance at the University of Manchester from 2008 to 2010 and then an associate professor of politics at the University of Nottingham from 2010 to 2015. From 2015 to 2024, he was professor of politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent. According to journalist James Ball, teaching at Kent involved a long commute from London for Goodwin and, around 2016, he tried to secure a professorship at London universities. He took voluntary severance and left the University of Kent on 31 July 2024. Goodwin said that voluntary severance "made sense for me, as someone in their forties who has done a long stint at universities. Bad actors are trying to imply that I have left because of my views on current events. That is very much not the case". His research has covered a range of topics, including Brexit, British politics, the implications of rising ethnic diversity in the West, and the future of Europe.

Other

Alongside his academic positions, Goodwin was associate fellow at Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs) between 2010 and 2020, where he authored research reports on the rise of populism, Euroscepticism ahead of the Brexit vote, the different political tribes of Europe, and the future of Europe.

In 2018, Goodwin published National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (co-authored with Roger Eatwell), which explained factors that contributed to Brexit.

Goodwin served on the Social Mobility Commission from September 2022 until 2023.

He is a former senior fellow for the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, and was the founding director of the Centre for UK Prosperity within the Legatum Institute. Goodwin is on the advisory panel of the Free Speech Union, a group that seeks to "counter Twitter mobs that drown out opinions they dislike". He has served as specialist adviser to the House of Commons Education Select Committee on left-behind pupils and has given evidence to a Public Bill Committee on the importance of defending academic freedom in universities.

In 2023, the New Statesman named Goodwin as the 43rd most powerful right-wing British political figure of the year. As of September 2024, Goodwin’s Substack newsletter ranked fifth on the website's leaderboard of "Top World Politics" Substacks and was one of the largest in the UK.

Commentary

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

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"). Goodwin recommends that political parties "lean into" this realignment by moving "left on economics and right on culture". 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." 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. 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.

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." Others have characterized Goodwin as a "populist academic", stating that he turned from observer into participant, becoming an apologist for populism. 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".

On diversity, "wokeism" and racism

Goodwin and his National Populism co-author 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'". 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; the debate was retitled "Immigration and Diversity Politics: A Challenge to Liberal Democracy?"

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, 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. Kenan Malik argues that Goodwin now advocates a politics that a decade earlier he would have described as "toxic".

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". Goodwin has also highlighted various instances of public funding for initiatives that he views as symptomatic of this cultural shift.

National Conservativism and UK riots

Goodwin spoke at the 2023 National Conservatism Conference, where he described the Conservative Party as in a "prolonged death spiral". Goodwin told CNN that conservatives needed to "decide who they are and what they want to be". For The Atlantic, Helen Lewis wrote that Goodwin gave "a typically doomy speech", which "segued into 10 minutes of pure populist beat poetry". 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". Goodwin has responded to such criticisms in his writings, including in his articles "What Happened to Me?"and "Have I Become Radicalised?". 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."

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” 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." 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".

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. 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

References

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