Dear John,
Matt Goodwin was billed as an “author and academic” on BBC Question Time in Bradford on Thursday night. Historically, that would be a fair label. But the political scientist that once sought to explain Britain’s rising right-wing nativist movement ended up joining them instead.
Goodwin used to write books and articles about populism, but today he’s a Reform UK mouthpiece (delivering a keynote speech at their party conference), as well as a GB News presenter and substack author. He serves as a source of intellectual legitimacy for Britain’s hard right, delivering xenophobic tirades with studious prose – a more professional polish compared to the vitriolic cries of someone like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson).
He himself acknowledges this, writing in his substack:
“You don’t need a mass movement to win the culture wars. You don’t need a new political party. You need a special force of a small number of highly committed disciplined serious people including academics, lawyers, advisors, campaigners, and you basically need to focus in a laser-like way on the issue at hand.”
And that’s exactly why he was a one-trick-pony on Question Time this week. He diverted every single question back to immigration, ranting about “open borders,” (our borders are far from open, and no one is suggesting opening them), “illegal migrants,” and the government hiding the ethnicity of criminal suspects. Not very scholarly stuff.
In one revealing moment, Goodwin was challenged by the good people of Bradford and completely crumbled. Asked about a violent sexual attack on a Sikh woman by two white men (who told her to ‘go back to her country’), Goodwin seemed to short-circuit. He just continued to repeat the same point about migrant crime statistics. It didn’t fit his narrative.
Another audience member called Goodwin out for it: “Matt, I think it’s quite poor that today you’ve used immigrants as a scapegoat for every single issue we’ve discussed.” He got a round of applause.
Single-issue agitators like Goodwin are consistently legitimised by mainstream outlets like the BBC. Another QT guest last night, Faiza Shaheen, is a distinguished policy fellow at the London School of Economics and holds a PhD in Research Methods and Statistics. She was billed as an “economist and activist.”
When mainstream broadcasters treat figures like Matt Goodwin as neutral commentators, they blur the line between analysis and agitation. Each unchallenged appearance takes us further down this rabbit hole of media manipulation and migration mania.
A healthy democracy depends on a media that informs, not inflames. People like Matt Goodwin – concertedly trying to promote a divisive narrative regardless of the reality – should never be silenced. But they must be challenged.
Here’s to Bradford’s QT audience – you showed the BBC how it’s done.
