Reform Watch Special: The Hungarian Candidate
Each week we cast our eyes over what Reform have been up to. This week, we're looking directly at Matt Goodwin.
The Lead is keeping an eye on Reform UK and their fellow travellers. Get in touch on X, Bluesky and Instagram or email ella@thelead.uk with tips and stories. We especially want to hear from readers whose local council is now run by Farage’s followers.
The announcement of hard-right blogger and GB News presenter Matt Goodwin as Reform’s candidate for the Gorton and Denton by-election elicited groans across Westminster and beyond.
For those unfamiliar with the one-time professor, Goodwin is a renowned voice on the hard-right media circuit, an incendiary character whom anti-facist campaign group Hope Not Hate has deemed a dangerous “opportunist extremist”.
Goodwin left his post at the University of Kent in August 2024, telling the Times Higher Education Supplement that “if you are voicing support for Brexit or criticising mass immigration or expressing conservative views, you are seen as an outlier” on university campuses. He has since found allies in the quasi-intellectual circles bankrolled by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the ally and inspiration for the Trump regime.
Goodwin has taken part in several events run by MCC Brussels, a think-tank run by Revolutionary Communist Party guru Frank Furedi and heavily bankrolled by the Hungarian state – including most recently the “Battle For The Soul of Europe” conference, where one speaker told the assembled reactionaries “the real threat does not come from Moscow or Beijing or from troll farms in St Petersburg. It comes from Brussels.”
Goodwin, who has been widely ridiculed for declaring that LONDON IS FINISHED, detailing some petty annoyances he experienced on a trip to the capital. He has praised Hungary effusively, saying after a visit to another MCC shindig in Budapest that in Hungary, “widely criticised by elites”, he saw “no crime. No homeless people. No riots. No unrest. No drugs. No mass immigration. No broken borders. No self-loathing. No chaos. And now I’ve just landed back in the UK.” (Goodwin, until recently a columnist for Spear’s Wealth Management magazine, probably knows more than most of us about the views of those elites).
Goodwin is notoriously prickly when challenged – something to watch out for as the campaign progresses – and it was notable that at his campaign launch, outlets including the Guardian, the Financial Times and Channel 4 were not called on to ask questions. He later refused to answer questions on his views about non-white Britons from the Guardian’s reporter (the Reform UK candidate had previously stated that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds can not necessarily be considered British).
It’s his ideas on who is and isn’t British that are likely to cause him difficulty in Gorton and Denton, one of the most diverse constituencies in the North West. In a report published in May 2025, Goodwin asserted that “between the years 2025 and 2050, the share of the population that is White British will decline from 73 per cent to 57 per cent, then 44 per cent by 2075, and 33.7 per cent by the year 2100”; a projection based on a ludicrous definition of “white British” that excluded anyone with one immigrant parent, such as, say, our current king.
And while so keen to define others’ origins, Goodwin is somewhat vague on his own. Reform’s press release claimed he was “made in Manchester”, glossing over the fact he was born and raised in St Albans, a mere 170 miles away. And somewhat disingenuously, Goodwin claims to have been the first person in his family to go to university, despite the fact that his father gained an MBA from London Business School in the mid-80s.
Goodwin has managed to escape serious scrutiny so far – mainly on account of the fact that for editors on the right he’s a useful talking head, and for editors on the left he’s a blowhard who doesn’t deserve the oxygen of publicity. But now he’s standing for office, expect the gloves to come off. Watch this space.
Also in today’s edition:
The Reform-led Lancashire County Council has effectively banned a Labour MP – Cat Smith – from speaking at a Fairtrade event, despite being a party that champions free speech. Lancashire County Council initially denied having been involved in the decision, until it was shown evidence of the contrary by our sister publication, The Lancashire Lead, where you can read the full story.
Deacon Blue, one of Scotland’s most celebrated rock bands, have decisively distanced themselves from Reform UK, after the party’s new Scottish leader, Malcom Offord, quoted from their song Dignity. The band said they were “appalled” that the song had been used to bolster Reform’s “poisonous rhetoric”.
With all the talk of Tory defections and it can be easy to forget that Reform councillors have been dropping like flies since last year’s by-election victories. This week, Councillor Desmond Watts, of Cambridgeshire, ditched Reform for it’s even harder right counterpart, Advance UK. He is the 10th, and counting.
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