Now even Matt Goodwin’s own colleagues are laughing at him

When writer Andy Twelves took to social media to detail the litany of errors – including that only four of 28 pupils spoke English as their first language in a single year one classroom in Bradford, that most primary school pupils’ main language in Leicester, Luton, Slough and “virtually all of London” is no longer English and that Cicero warned “We must begin with the people closest to us” (there is no record of Cicero ever saying this) – Goodwin immediately challenged him to a public debate, inevitably on his employer GB News.

The former politics professor must have been licking his lips at seeing his tormentor being torn apart on the hard right channel – only for host Miriam Cates, the former Conservative MP, to do the unthinkable and chair the debate in a relatively fair and balanced way, allowing Goodwin to flounder as he failed to challenge any of Twelves’s claims and fell back on his usual moans about how publishing had “been completely captured by woke activists and sensitivity readers”. “Artificial intelligence is a research tool that every journalist, every academic, every data analyst now uses,” he grumbled.

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Goodwin is said to have declined to shake Twelves’s hand before the debate, remained silent in the breaks while Twelves and Cates chatted and left the studio immediately afterwards. Worse still, he found himself being pilloried on the channel the following day, as his appearance was chosen as one of the week’s ‘Triggered Tantrums’ on its Saturday Five programme. 

Guest Lizzie Cundy said: “I’ve got to say, I’ve never seen anything like it”, while other panelists chortled at his inability to name a single academic who had peer-reviewed his tawdry tome. The haughty Goodwin, it appears, is not widely liked even by his own colleagues.

Meanwhile, Goodwin has received nothing but opprobrium even from those ordinarily sympathetic to his politics. Laurence Fox, actor turned activist, found himself agreeing on X with the left wing broadcaster Mehdi Hasan’s view it was “hilarious”, adding that “MattGPT” was “well called out” by Twelves, while right wing commentator Connor Tomlinson questioned: “Why would you not be able to answer where the quotes came from, and need to correct them, if you wrote the book, Matt?”.

Restore Britain founder and MP Rupert Lowe, meanwhile, suggested that Goodwin “upgrade his AI subscriptions”, while Dan Wootton, the ex GB News man forced out over a sexism incident, said that he had “completely trashed his reputation” and pointed out that “no one in Reform has publicly defended him”. Things are bad when even Wootton can get on his high horse!

Meanwhile, in the increasingly Reformy Spectator, Sam Leith wrote: “Mr Twelves’s claim that ‘it’s not just factual errors in this book, but basic spelling and grammar ones’, I should say in fairness, tends to support Goodwin’s claim that he wrote it all himself.”