Matt Goodwin’s fall into the abyss

Today, he has a Substack. With it, he has a furious desire for his opinions on the unrest to be known. He has insisted the rioters must not be called “far right”. He has suggested they are justified because of “mass immigration”.

He has praised Hungary – which ranks top in Europe for political corruption, and which has shut down universities and media outlets opposed to the government – as having “No riots. No unrest. No drugs. And no mass immigration”, in a manner likened to the response of useful idiots in Soviet times given approved tours of Communist states.

Any criticism of his increasingly fringe stances are part of “a concerted effort by the elite class…to ‘manage’ the debate and shut down dissent”. He will likely view this article in those terms. The man who used to study populist movements and radicalisation now sounds like any other alt-right or fringe right online influencer. How did he end up here?

People who have worked with or encountered Matt Goodwin have no shortage of things to say about his bizarre trajectory, though often they would prefer to do so off the record, in part because they have little desire to be subject to mobbing by his new online fanbase.

The picture they paint is not of an ideologue, but instead of a man whose ambitions were not met rapidly enough by the genuine success he had in his career – sending him veering off course and radically changing his politics and his perspective.

People who worked with and alongside Matt Goodwin in his early career describe a bright and hard-working young academic, who was energetic almost to a fault. Goodwin would email or phone at all hours, always be on the go, and showed little interest or consideration for the fact other workers might have children or life commitments that meant they couldn’t be quite as “always on” as Goodwin himself.

Despite that frenetic energy – or perhaps because of it – several describe Goodwin as good company, and entertaining. Most people in the world of political science didn’t see it as an especially ideological corner of academia – Marxist thinking and critical theory are relatively rare in a field dominated by people obsessed with political polling and history. But Goodwin would come to see things very differently.

Goodwin, they say, was relatively well-accepted and well-liked, even if he was a relative rarity as a moderate “Cameronite” right-of-centre figure. He was described as ambitious, intent on growing his academic career and getting noticed by the media, both of which he achieved relatively well. Colleagues described the need to advance as almost an addiction for him, saying that he displayed that addictive personality in other spheres too – even in friendly poker games.

Goodwin’s determination to get a professorship paid off when he joined the University of Kent in 2015 – a significant office to reach by 34. But while Kent is a respected university, it’s not in what is perceived as the very top tier among the academic elite – and it also involved a long commute from London.

Goodwin’s mood – and his politics – started to turn in around 2016, the year in which the UK voted to leave the EU and the US voted for Trump. This was also the approximate time Goodwin is believed to have tried and failed to secure politics professorships at London universities, seeking another rapid early promotion. But he failed to secure it.

This is where several academics say they saw Goodwin’s attitude metastasise into something more toxic – a sense that an academic elite was holding back his career (from a type of role several colleagues say they think he would eventually have got, had he been more patient), which began to pervade his wider ideology.

It is around this time 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.

The Matt Goodwin of 2024 likes to frame himself as something of a prophet of the populist backlash against “elites” that was Brexit, Trump, and arguably even Corbynism. Writing in The Sun in March, Goodwin wrote:

“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.”

Unfortunately for Goodwin, academics keep receipts. Professor Will Jennings of the University of Southampton collected a thread of Goodwin’s actual predictions from the time. Speaking at a panel at the London School of Economics on June 23, 2016 – 24 hours before the vote – Matt Goodwin predicted a Remain win by two points.

While he gave Trump a better chance of winning the presidency in 2016 than some other pundits, Goodwin still wrote he “would most likely fail”. Bizarrely and incorrectly, Goodwin also suggested that “the electoral college stacks the deck against the Republicans”, when the opposite is true – no Republican has won the popular vote for the presidency since 2004 (and Bush did not win it in 2000).

The failed predictions continue. Goodwin famously had to eat his own book on national television after saying Labour would never achieve a vote share of 38% in 2017’s general election. He then got 2019 wrong in the opposite direction, saying it is “more plausible Jeremy Corbyn could soon be PM than people think” and “we’re not likely to see any return to moderate, centre-left democratic Labour politics” even if Corbyn departed. 

Predictably, Goodwin thought Donald Trump would win the 2020 election. Nostradamus he really isn’t.

Goodwin’s recollection of his own recent history when it comes to predictions seems to be sadly lacking. Perhaps he has a similar amnesia when it comes to his own positions and opinions, which could help to explain the total lack of consistency in his views.

Some of Goodwin’s inconsistencies are visible over a matter of weeks. He has, during the current tumult, expressed repeated outrage at those on the street being called “far right”, but as the Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges noted, just a few months ago he was decrying the relationship between “Islamo-Fascism” and the “woke left”.

But when it comes to the Matt Goodwin of 2024 and the Matt Goodwin of 2010-2015, there is a substantial ideological gulf. At this time, Goodwin had been appointed by Conservative minister Sayeeda Warsi – now an outspoken critic of the racism of her own party – to an advisory body on tackling anti-Muslim hatred.

This was work he regularly wrote about. For HuffPost in 2012, he wrote an article with the title “Far right violence: more needs to be done”, warning there was too much focus on “religious based extremism” and “we need to do more to understand and counter far right violence”.

A year before he wrote on the Conservative Home website that “Anti-Muslim sentiment and its effects pose one of the most complex and stubborn challenges facing European societies”, decrying the “worrying levels of public hostility” towards Muslims in Britain. In the same article he noted that BNP supporters felt Muslims were not committed to Britain and didn’t want to integrate with Britain – adding these views were “of course…nonsense”.

In the Guardian in 2013, Goodwin bemoaned “unhelpful opinion polls, which either attempt to show how many Muslims sympathise with terrorists, or how non-Muslims don’t like Muslims”.

Goodwin eventually resigned his role on the taskforce in 2015, because he felt the government was not doing enough to tackle Islamophobia. In the Guardian once again, he warned that Islamophobia played “directly into the hands of extremists who claim that western societies will never accept Islam and its followers”. Accusing the government of failing to seriously engage with Muslim communities, he said it should instead work to “engage across all communities and inspire their trust”.

A debate between the Matt Goodwin of 2015 and the Matt Goodwin of 2024 would be well worth watching. Former colleagues and collaborators point to Goodwin’s work over this era, to show that far from being ostracised for extreme views, Goodwin’s views became ever more marginal as his career stalled – suggesting that his new politics are the result of his seeking a new focus for his ambition.

Either way, academia seems to be – for now, at least – in Goodwin’s past. All mention of the University of Kent has been stripped from Goodwin’s X account, and a spokesman said that Goodwin had “left the University of his own accord”, with his final day being 31 July.

Sources within the university suggest Goodwin’s departure had been known within the faculty for some months, his last teaching duties having finished well before his departure date. Some suggested Goodwin had left some colleagues to deal with administration and marking before his final exit.

With regard to Goodwin’s most recent social media posts, the university spokesman noted that as “Matt is no longer a staff member so it would be inappropriate to comment on this. I believe he has removed his former Kent affiliation from his X profile.”

That leaves Goodwin as a 42-year-old man who has left the only career he has ever known. His new profile describes him as the “author of one of the UK’s biggest Substacks”. He is also joining several of his new colleagues on the UK right-fringes in branching out Stateside – or making the attempt.

In July, Goodwin gave an address to the Heritage Foundation, the US think tank behind Donald Trump’s notorious “Project 2025”, entitled “Popular sovereignty: the US-UK special relationship in the age of Trump, Farage and Brexit”.

It’s not clear whether finalising his departure from the University of Kent is related to Goodwin’s amped-up social media activities in recent days.

“Goodwin has been on a sad, depressing journey of radicalisation,” said one senior Conservative Party figure. “He began as someone who was genuinely interested in examining the worst problems in some corners of our society.

“Instead of writing about the radical right, he became part of it — and has increasingly said whatever he needs to get more subscribers to his Substack. It would be a laughable grift if he wasn’t playing with fire at the time of riots.”

This view was echoed by Professor Rob Ford of the University of Manchester, who ten years ago co-authored the book Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain but who has now ended contact with Goodwin.

“This week’s ghastly behaviour has saddened me greatly but no it doesn’t shock me. The direction of travel has been clear for quite a while now,” he said. “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.

“He’s boarded a one-way train whose final stations are ‘Powell, Griffin, Tommy Robinson’. The only thing that’s surprised me is his decision to speed up his journey to that fetid neighbourhood.”

Few think Goodwin has the personal charisma to become a top-tier influencer on the right-wing fringes he now inhabits. He has burned most of his bridges in academia and the think tank world, in a way that will be difficult to repair. His worth as a political advisor is likely confined to GB News and Reform UK.

For those who still have sympathy for Goodwin, there is some tragedy in that. Goodwin set out to study and research the causes of radicalisation, and ended up radicalising himself when his ambitions were not met as quickly as he expected.

Instead, Goodwin has become part of the phenomenon he once studied – a cautionary tale of the danger of staring into the abyss, and the dangers of being captured by your audience. He has dived into the petri dish, and no-one knows what will eventually emerge.