Shock as two senior figures in a Nigel Farage party fall out with each other

Rats in a Sack reported yesterday how Goodwin, Reform’s defeated candidate in the recent Gorton and Denton by-election, was facing claims his new screed Suicide of a Nation had been written with the use of AI, it being riddled with mistakes and made-up quotes and lacking citations for most of its factual claims.

Dubious claims in the book include 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). In addition, the few citations in the book have not had ChatGPT removed from their URLs.

Now Montgomerie – the founder of the once-influential Conservative Home website who defected to Nigel Farage’s turquoise Tories in 2024 – has waded in, publicly suggesting on, inevitably, X, that should the allegations be true, Goodwin should be ditched as a candidate.

“The whole controversy over @GoodwinMJ’s book reminds me of the early warning sign that Rachel Reeves’ dodgy footnotes provided about her,” wrote Montgomerie. 

Suggested Reading

Ipswich fans’ fury at divisive right-winger

Rats in a Sack

“@reformparty_uk should now fully investigate Mr Goodwin’s book and if there are repeated examples of factual error he should be removed from the candidates list. We need our future MPs to be trustworthy and credible.”

This triggered Goodwin, who responded: “What Reform should do is stop taking Tory Wets like you. I’ve responded to my critics here” (here he linked to a lengthy X post in which he fails to address a single one of the claims about his sloppy book and instead insults his critics).

“All you do is criticise Reform & our campaigns. I have no idea why you are even in Reform unless it is to try and weaken it?”.

“Play the ball, not the man Matt,” said Montgomerie “If you can. If your book is thoroughly researched you have nothing to fear from an internal investigation. ‘If’ it is.”

Boys, boys! Play nicely! Nigel hardly wants to run the sort of party in which senior figures constantly scrap publicly among themselves! Er…

Meanwhile, Goodwin has called on the writer who initially exposed his reliance on Mr ChatGPT, Andy Twelves, to debate him publicly, describing his claims as “spurious and false” and claiming, rather spectacularly, that Suicide of a Nation is “the only book which tells British people the truth”. Alas for Goodwin, he wasn’t even able to do that without making an untrue claim, demanding said debate take place on GB News as the channel “contract us both”. Twelves is not contracted by GB News.