Last summer, Matt Goodwin parted ways with the University of Kent to spend more time with his Substack, focusing on his new hustle as an increasingly edgy right wing influencer playing to the crowd on Elon Musk’s X. But thanks to a “visiting professorship” with the private University of Buckingham, he has been able, just about, to keep one foot within the realms of respectability.
This pays off for him, too. When he was invited to speak to BBC’s Question Time last week, Goodwin was credentialed as an “author and academic”. Fellow panellist Faiza Shaheen, whose credentials include a doctorate from the University of Manchester and a distinguished policy fellowship at LSE, however, was demoted to a mere “economist and activist”.
Goodwin’s efforts to stay just on the right side of respectability rely on enough plausible deniability about the kind of views he is now advocating. Sadly for him, he may have lost that cover with his reaction to the horrifying train attack near Huntingdon last weekend.
Just minutes after police revealed that both suspects in the case (one of whom has since been released with no further action) were British citizens born in the UK, Goodwin tweeted that the attack was the result of “mass controlled immigration”.
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Goodwin got the most basic facts of the case wrong, while victims were still critically ill in hospital, in his bid to use the attack to further his political agenda. Instead of an abject apology for this, Goodwin inevitably doubled down: “It takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody ‘British’,” he said.
Goodwin did not elaborate on why these two black men, one of whom we now know was not at all involved in the attack, might be less British than anyone else born and raised here. It is not hard to guess at why, though.
If Goodwin still wants to be treated as a respectable commentator, appearing on mainstream channels, he should be made to explain exactly what he meant. Why were these suspects not “British”? How many categories of citizenship does he want to create – just a second-class tier, or third? Do Jews get to be “British” under his new rules? Which races need to pass an extra Goodwin test, and which automatically qualify?
Goodwin, of course, is welcome to offer answers on a postcard. Until then, the producers of any BBC show looking to platform him might want to wonder what kind of guest they’re endorsing.
